"Bright straw-yellow colour with lemon-green hints, pale on the rim.  The nose is softly full with harmoniously entwined aromas of tropical fruit along with citrus fruit and stonefruits, and a layering of savoury apricots and delicate nuances of nutty oak, unfolding creamy barrel-ferment and MLF elements.  The aromatics blossom in the glass.  Dry to taste and medium-bodied, the palate has a soft and rounded heart with gently packed flavours of ripe citrus fruit and tropical fruit, melded with savoury apricots.  The mouthfeel features soft textures and the palate builds in weight and presence.  The acidity is soft and adds to the richness of the wine, and the flavours vary to a soft, sustained finish.  This is a softly rich and rounded Chardonnay/Viognier blend with citrus, stonefruit and apricot flavours on a creamy-textured palate with good weight.  Match with creamy seafood, poultry and pork dishes over the next 3 year.  A blend of two-thirds Chardonnay and one-third Viognier, the fruit from Maraekakaho, Havelock North and Bridge Pa, fully barrel fermented, with 10% in tank, this being Viognier, to 13.0% alc., and 1.2 g/L RS, the wine aged 5 months in seasoned oak on lees with batonnage, undergoing MLF" Raymond Chan

"A gorgeous blend of two classic grapes; the complex bouquet shows apricot, mango, vanilla and roasted cashew characters, followed by a succulent palate that is fleshy and supple. The wine offers terrific fruit intensity and textural mouthfeel, leading to a lingering expansive finish" Sam Kim, Wine Orbit

This wine is a toasty, mineral flintiness of our tried and true Hawke’s Bay Chardonnay, spiced up a smidge with the more exotic apricot, loquat and honeysuckle of Viognier. It’s a little cracker.

The 2018 growing season in Hawke’s Bay was hot and dry allowing the grapes to ripen and develop lovely richness and perfume. The Chardonnay was grown in the winemakers Maraekakaho vineyard. Planted on an ancient river terrace formed by the Ngaruroro River which now flows around 60 metres below the vineyard. The remaining terraces are made up of greywacke rocks and gravels and a topsoil borne of windblown loess. The Viognier comes from down river at our Bridge Pa vineyard. Planted on an old riverbed last flooded around 50,000 years ago, it has a shallow topsoil over free draining red gravels.

Grapes were hand picked then whole bunch pressed and run to French barrels for a wild ferment before being aged for six months The wine was taken from barrel off gross lees and blended to tank, then lightly filtered and bottled.

A Chardonnay Viognier blend is something we reckon should be world-famous, given time maybe it will be. The Old World homes of these wines are Burgundy and the Northern Rhone, with a history of popes, kings and generations of artisan producers fine tuning their viticulture at the same time as surviving wars and pestilence. There are some clear similarities between the great reds, Pinot Noir and Syrah….why not the whites?