Chardonnay 2022

Tasting Notes

A shimmering golden lime colour, this vibrant, youthful wine shows a succinct minerality on the nose, with delicate honeysuckle florals, lemon and melon notes, alongside distinctive almond and buckwheat aromas.

Flinty, chalky Chardonnay characteristics on the palate are here finely counterbalanced by a silken textural display of peach flesh, apple skin and grilled citrus with an intensely rich mid-palate shot through with a subtle lime acidity.

This is a very limited release of a supremely harmonious wine of elegant length and poise.

Accolades

• Cameron Douglas MS: 95 pts
  "An exacting, ripe and pure fruited wine with a bouquet of fresh peach and white nectarine, sweet grapefruit and vanilla-cream and wood spice complexities. As the wine opens out and relaxes in glass these ideas grow showcasing the fruit and winemaking. Full-bodied, youthful, taut, complex and dry. Flavours of stone fruits and citrus reflect the bouquet, the baking spice layers from French barrel and fruit frame the core. Fine tannins and medium+ acid line. Delicious and lengthy with best drinking from mid to late 2025 through 2030."

In the Vineyard

Once again, the effect of Auckland lockdowns saw a smaller team at work in the vineyard, without our usual international backpacker support and winter pruning, all done by hand, was particularly challenging. A very early although uneven budburst gave us a long flowering period this vintage, something experienced in most grape growing regions in the country. Veraison (colour change and softening of the berries) also was early, with all the vines netted in early January.

Our vineyard team did their usual meticulous job of creating an open vine canopy by removing excess foliage by hand to allow air movement to dry the fruit and allow sunlight penetration. We are clearly reaping the benefits of the application over many years of organic soil health-enhancing products, producing healthier vines which can better withstand disease.

A mild but rainy winter gave way eventually to a dry hot summer, with just the odd unwelcome rain event. Nevertheless we were able to carefully monitor the developing fruit ripeness and hand harvest an exceptional quality crop. As with most regions in the country, our yield for this vintage was generally 20% less than the previous year, a reflection of a cooler, damp spring during the flowering period.

In the Winery

The hand-harvested Chardonnay fruit was whole-bunch pressed, cold settled and then racked into one and two year old French barrels for fermentation. The wine remained on lees during the malo-lactic fermentation then remained in barrel for around 10 months before bottling.

Cellaring Potential

In stable cellaring conditions, this wine should continue to evolve over the next 6–7 years.

Vintage Notes

Harvest Period: 17 February 2022
Bottling: 7 December 2022
Composition: 100% Chardonnay
Alcohol: 13.5% ABV
Total Acidity: 5.9 g/L
pH: 3.04
Residual Sugar: 3 g/L
Closure: Screw cap
Bottle Size: 750ml
Production: Limited release of 36 dozen bottles