Mahi Alchemy Marlborough Chardonnay 2022

Description

Cream, Melon, Oak

Elegant in structure showing green melon and citrus peel aromas. Creamy in the mid-palate giving weight and texture, with the acidity assisting the linearity and length.

Mahi, meaning ‘our work, our craft’, began in 2001, fulfilling a dream of ours. After 15 vintages it was time to do our own thing. With a strong focus on single-vineyard wines, and now backed up by a series of premium regional wines from Marlborough, the idea behind Mahi is to respect and promote the individuality of the various vineyards. The Mahi symbol represents the strength, life, and growth of the native New Zealand frond (fern), with the understanding that wine should never be rushed to bottle, respecting its ability to evolve naturally over time.

This year, our 22nd, was again distinctive and again it was early and some serious rainfall at veraison meant that the berries were bigger this year, so the crops were slightly higher.
Starting on March the 10th we harvested quickly and finished the earliest ever. It was not a hot vintage, so the flavours were retained, but we felt the grapes were fragile so picked quickly as things ripened. We saw early on that it was a bigger year and, with cooler easterlies winds predominating, we decided to drop some bunches early, up to 18 bunches a vine in one parcel!? This really helped as the vines managed to get the remaining bunches ripe and we were happy with the health of the fruit. April saved us also as it only had 19% of normal rainfall and we nearly had the last month of no rain, which was so good. Slightly lower sugars this year means the wine is perhaps more elegant and refined but it still shows the texture we are looking for.

The aim for this Chardonnay is to retain a fresh structure with complexity and texture rather than producing a wine that is too broad. This fruit comes from a small parcel from the Badlands vineyard, located in the Rapaura region of Marlborough. The area was once old riverbed and as such the soils have a lot of river stones, combined with silt and clay components also. Typically, it is a slightly warmer area of the valley and as such we find the fruit gives more tropical notes. All of the grapes were hand-picked and then whole-cluster pressed. The resulting juice went straight to French oak barrels and fermented with indigenous yeast from the vineyard. After fermentation the wine sat on yeast lees for fifteen months prior to bottling.