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Winemaker Note
“Clear, bright, pale gold appearance.
Really like smelling this! Looks every inch a cool climate chardonnay! Stonefruit, green melon, mineral flintiness. As the bouquet opens in the glass some lovely malty, subtle vanilla notes, a hit of wild honey and nougat. Real nice!
Lovely texture and line through the palate. Positive minerality with subtle lemon and white fleshed stone fruit flavours linger. Salivating and salty finish.
Food match – Pan roasted crispy skin snapper fillet, pomme puree, beurre blanc.
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There is a saying in the wine industry – “There are no bad vintages, just the odd challenging one”. Vintage 2023 here in Martinborough would certainly fit into the challenging category. The now infamous triple dip La Nina certainly lived up to the hype. Persistent rainfall and high temperatures are not conditions that favour grape farmers. It took all of our collective skill and hard work to pull the crop through.
Winemaking can be a tough trade and unlike beer or gin makers we only get one shot each year to create our product, and it’s all about the quality of the fruit! If mother nature does not abide then tough luck, you gotta work with what you get.
Upon reflection, Vintage 2023, whilst very challenging and far from “classic”, was actually very successful, for us at least. Certainly a tale of two vineyards; our Blue Rock Vineyard performed extremely well and quality was outstanding. Less so our Eclipse vineyard, although there were some excellent pockets, particularly Chardonnay. The biggest take home for me personally was the excellent, never say die attitude of our team. We rallied hard, we doubled down and we never gave up! It is true that adversity builds strength and resilience.
Making awesome wine from the tougher seasons is what this job is all about! Bring on the next vintage.
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Crafted using fruit sourced from our most recently planted chardonnay blocks. Vines are around 5 -6 seasons old and 2023 is the second season of production.
Upon receival into the winery the fruit was gently pressed and the juice was transferred into a temperature controlled stainless steel tank where it was allowed to sit at around 8 degrees for 3 days to allow most of the solids to settle out prior to transfer to seasoned French oak barrels for fermentation and maturation. This chardonnay spent around 9 months in barrel prior to gentle filtration and bottling February 2024.
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Pan roasted crispy skin snapper fillet, pomme puree, beurre blanc.
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pH 3.38
TA 5.1 g/L
RS < 1 g/L
Alc 13 %
