FNB Sauvignon Blanc Top 10 names South Africa's 2026 winners

South Africa's FNB Sauvignon Blanc Top 10 named its 2026 winners on 14 October, picking ten wines from 159 entries at Weltevreden Wine Estate in Stellenbosch.

The result closes the 20th edition of the only South African wine competition built around a single grape. Sauvignon Blanc South Africa ran it with title partner FNB and platinum partner Ever Solutions, narrowing 95 producers down to 20 finalists in September, then to ten names read out at the gala.

The ten wines judges picked

Across all styles, these wines share precision, clear varietal character and a strong sense of place.

Carmen Stevens, De Grendel, Groot Phesantekraal, La Motte, Lomond and Quoin Rock took six places with wooded Sauvignon Blancs. Iona, Steenberg, Tokara and Wildeberg Terroirs filled the unwooded half. Nine of the ten wines are from the 2025 vintage; Iona's Elgin Highlands bottle, from 2026, is the first wine of that young vintage to make the list.

Oenologist Dr Carien Coetzee convened the panel over three days of blind tasting at Bontevlei, outside Stellenbosch, in late August. She judged with Cape Wine Masters Winifred Bowman and Anton Swarts, De Grendel winemaker Morgan Steyn and Benguela Cove cellarmaster Johann Fourie, plus two Cape Winemakers Guild protégés as guest judges. Cape Town and Elgin, where the city's food scene now runs alongside its vineyards, supplied most of the finalists.

"Across all styles, these wines share precision, clear varietal character and a strong sense of place," Coetzee said of the field. On the vintage itself, she added that acidity in the 2025 wines was "very well controlled, with a rounded, integrated quality."

Sauvignon Blanc's two decades in Stellenbosch

FNB has backed the competition since it started 20 years ago, when South African Sauvignon Blanc was still settling on a house style between green, grassy wines and riper, barrel-aged ones. Sauvignon Blanc South Africa chairperson Elunda Basson called the anniversary a milestone "that belongs to the producers who continue to raise the bar."

FNB's Stephan Claassen, who covers the Western and Eastern Cape for the bank's commercial arm, tied the sponsorship to jobs and rural development rather than to the wine itself, a reminder of how closely South Africa's wine shows run alongside its banking and retail sponsors.

There is no cash prize, just a leaf-shaped Top 10 logo for the label and a tasting-notes booklet. It is a quieter reward than last week's Best Sommelier of the World final in Lisbon, with its Coliseu stage and live audience, but it still gets a producer's name onto supermarket shelves. Sauvignon Blanc South Africa holds its annual seminar and AGM at Hazendal Wine Estate on 11 November, when next year's entry rules are usually confirmed.