Mahi Marlborough Pinot Gris 2023

Description

Cream, Dry, Pear

Characters from this special vineyard in Ward give this Pinot Gris complexity and depth. The palate has an elegant structure with a creamy, textural mid-palate and a long finish.

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 23rd, was again distinctive and it was a late start for us and was a longer vintage. Starting on March the 15th the weather stayed very settled through the vintage period and allowed us to pick as we like until we finished on April 18th. Smaller crops always helps and after a warm period after Christmas the temperatures cooled down to ‘average’ and it served to maintain fruit flavours while ripening the fruit.
A great team from seven nations worked so well together and we are super happy with the eventual wines.

Our Marlborough Pinot Gris comes from one vineyard located just outside the township of Ward in the Awatere Valley. It is owned and managed by Sara Davies and Andrew Craig.
The fruit was machine-picked to bin, so maceration was minimised, and a portion of this juice was barrel-fermented in older French oak to give greater weight, though ensuring that wood is not evident on the nose. The balance of the wine was fermented cool to retain the fruit characters that come from this special vineyard The final blend this year was made solely from free-run juice, as we feel it gives a more elegant and subtle wine, especially with Pinot Gris, that has quite ‘grey’ coloured skins and is inherently quite tannic.