• French oak
• Grapefruit
• Smokey bacon
• Fresh acidity

"Impressive, vibrant and flinty white-peach and grapefruit aromas with an array of fresh, spicy, hazelnut-tinged oak. The palate combines a lot of ripe melon and white peaches with smoky, grilled nuts. Great wine that’s packed with interest" Nick Stock, jamessuckling.com, Oct 2018

"Wow. Wow and triple wow. If the immense punch of grilled grapefruit, buttered crumpet, and hints of smoked bacon and popcorn doesn’t send you sideways, the powerful, weighty, woof-inducing complexity on the palate definitely will. Sourced from old vines and matured on its yeast lees in 30% new French oak puncheons, it’s a beautiful, golden, richly textured wine that has beautifully smoky layers on the finish. Cellaring potential? I’d love to taste this again in five years. Gorgeous stuff" Yvonne Lorkin, May 2019

"Estate grown in North Canterbury, this is a highly impressive, youthful wine. Powerful and weighty, it is invitingly fragrant, with intense, grapefruit-like flavours gently seasoned with biscuity French oak, notable complexity and obvious ageing potential" Michael Cooper, The Listener Magazine, Jun 2019

"This powerful, North Canterbury wine has a definite ‘wow’ factor. From ungrafted, 30-year-old vines, it was hand-picked and fermented with indigenous yeasts in French oak puncheons. Full of personality, it has a highly fragrant, complex, slightly smoky bouquet, leading into a weighty but elegant palate, with grapefruit-like flavours, finely integrated oak and lovely depth" Michael Cooper, Winestate Magazine Australia, Aug 2019

"Rich, weighty, textural wine that “feels” as good as it tastes. Big, intense and quite complex chardonnay with struck match/mineral, grapefruit, bran biscuit and spicy oak flavours. Impressive now but promises to grow in stature with bottle age" Gourmet Traveller Magazine, Australia, Aug 2019

"Big charry and flinty nose. Great intensity and concentration. Complex and rich; long finish with grapefruit citrus Reductive. Carries over to palate. Too much. Mild yellow; developed; very sulfidic and smoky; oaky; developed; rich but a tad clumsy. Sulfides rule. Sulfitey and lean; exotic" The Six Nations Wine Challenge, sixnations.com.au, Feb 2020

The colour is lemon/straw. On the nose there are aromas of citrus, as well as honeydew melon and some stone fruit (peach and nectarine). In addition there is a hint of struck match which adds complexity and a flinty minerality. There are also some underlying savoury notes (toast and brioche) as a result of the secondary fermentation and lees contact in the barrel. The palate is concentrated, however the earlier picking has resulted in a wine that remains elegant and focussed, with refreshing acidity and a lingering finish.

Settled weather over flowering resulted in a moderate fruit set. The subsequent warm summer then allowed the grapes to ripen beautifully. Naturally smaller berry size and loose open bunches helped accelerate ripening, allowing winemakers to pick the fruit a little earlier this season than usual.

The vineyard is located within the Waipara Valley of North Canterbury, on free draining, north facing terraces carved out of New Zealand’s Southern Alps by an ice-age glacier. It benefits from being in the lee of the Teviotdale Range, giving maximum protection from the Pacific’s easterly breezes and thus creating a unique mesoclimate. The vines are over 30 years old, with a large proportion planted on their own roots. The soil is free draining and of low fertility, resulting in naturally reduced vine vigour. This produces low yields of optimally ripened, high quality, flavourful grapes, which fully express the qualities of this unique terroir. The vineyard has warm days, but the nights are amongst the coolest in the Waipara Valley, drawing out the ripening period of the grapes, while still retaining good natural acidity.

Wiemakers use traditional Burgundian winemaking methods. The fruit was hand-picked in stages during early April and then the whole bunches gently pressed. The nonclarified juice was then put into large French oak barrels (puncheons), 70% of which were old in order to limit pickup of oak flavour. In these it underwent primary fermentation by the grapes indigenous yeasts. The wine was then matured in the puncheons on its natural deposits of yeast lees (sur lie). In the summer after harvest it started to go through spontaneous secondary (malolactic) fermentation. It was regularly tasted during this time and the fermentation was stopped when the ideal balance was obtained. It had approximately 12 months maturation prior to bottling.