Jackson Estate Shelter Belt Marlborough Chardonnay 2018

Description

• French oak
• Spiced marzipan
• Fresh citrus & fig
• Clean acidity

​Notes of clean and fresh citrus, fig and spiced marzipan create an enticing entry to this wine. Combined with the underlying complex notes of oyster shell and a beautiful minerality, this wine has bags of character on the nose. The palate follows in flavor profile with layers of textural complexity and a ripe clean acidity and a long, elegant finish.

Made from fruit harvested from the Jackson Estate Homestead vineyard, this wine is an expression of a single clone and single site. Intensive hands-on viticulture including short and fruit thinning, hand-picking and sorting are incorporated to optimize fruit and wine quality.

Like 2017, Vintage 2018 was truly a mixed bag. Early in the season they had settled and very warm weather however later in the season there were challenges with several rain events and periods of cool weather. Judicious use of leaf plucking, and canopy management pre-vintage allowed them to dry out and successfully ripen the fruit after these events. As a result, they generally picked physiologically ripe fruit that was at a slightly lower Brix level resulting in soft elegant wines showing ripe succulent flavours.

Both picks were whole bunch loaded to press and cut to taste by the winemaker, with 75% of the juice going to barrel with a high proportion of solids and 25% remaining in stainless tanks. The barrel portion contained 25% new oak with the rest made up of 2-5 year old barrels. Fermentation was carried out in both stainless tanks and French barrel’s by indigenous yeasts and reached a maximum temperature of 25°C. The young wines remained on their ferment lees over winter and began natural malolactic fermentation in the spring. Aged for 9 months in oak, the barrel batch was racked, assessed and blended with the aged tank portion and prepared for bottle late March 2019.