Mahi Marlborough Chardonnay 2018

Description

• French oak
• Complex
• Textural
• Good acidity

This wine is a complex, textural wine that exhibits the slight creaminess on the mid-palate that is the key characteristic of Chardonnay. The structure still retains acidity giving length and freshness.

Such an early one, especially after the late start of the 2017 vintage. This was Mahi's second earliest start and from then it was pretty well full-on for the next 19 days. Picking for vintage 2018 finished for Mahi on April the 6th, their earliest, and a day before they started picking in 2012, proving once again that no two vintages are the same, something so good about making wine. 

The aim for this Chardonnay is to retain a fresh structure with a complex palate. Therefore winemakers minimise the malolactic fermentation so that it is really the vineyards, fruit, wild-ferment and barrel characters that make up the complex nose and palate. This fruit comes from three vineyards; the Taylor Vineyard which is in the Rapaura area, the Twin Valleys vineyard, which we have been working with since 2003 and a small amount of recently planted Clone 1066 from the Mahi home block in front of the winery. All of the vines were intensively hand-tended and the grapes hand-picked and then taken to the winery for whole-cluster pressing. The resulting juice went straight to French oak barrels and fermented with indigenous yeast from the fruit. After fermentation the wine sat on yeast lees for eleven months prior to blending and bottling.