TASTING NOTES

Our Martinborough Vineyard Chardonnay is a classic wine full of ripe stonefruit aromas with biscuit and mineral notes intertwining on the nose.  Careful use of oak has created a wine that is finely grained and focussed yet shows power and depth of flavour. Our winemaking style focuses on producing a well balanced Chardonnay that is rich and full bodied whilst remaining balanced and elegant. This wine is drinking well in its youth but will reward those that have the patience to cellar it.

VINEYARD

Chardonnay vines are some of our oldest plantings on the Martinborough Terrace. We have five clones of Chardonnay planted that provide the majority of this blend. These blocks consistently give us full ripe concentrated fruit that makes a Chardonnay that is both rich and complex yet retains balance and elegance

The region has a cool, maritime climate along with other beneficial climatic drivers including a rain shadow, one of the country’s largest diurnal temperature differentials, windy springs and a long warm ripening period through autumn.  All this results in a natural low-vigour site regulating crops and enabling high quality, consistent, ripe fruit.

VINIFICATION

The fruit is carefully sorted in the vineyard during hand harvesting and then whole-bunch pressed. The juice is pressed and left to settle for only a couple of hours before being fermented entirely in French oak barriques.  Only indigenous yeasts are used in the fermentation process.  The oak is carefully chosen for elegance to complement the fine structure of the wine.  Aged in barrels on lees for 12 months, the wine underwent 95% malolactic fermentation and regular lees stirring before bottling.