Mission Estate Vineyard Selection Hawke's Bay Chardonnay 2018

Description

The colour is pale gold and the nose has rich fruit and citrus aromas with some vanilla and toasty notes. On the palate, sweet buttery and stone fruit flavours come through on the fine mid palate. The oak is subtle and well integrated with bready lees characters. These flavours show through beautifully in the soft mouthfeel and clean finish.

Fruit was selected from warm inland sites with light sandy soils over gravel sub soils. With a good summer, 2018 had plenty of warm dry weather well into February. There was a bit of rain later on though into the autumn. The crop loads were average to light, had good ripe flavours, was clean, and showed good intensity. And the vineyards were all planted with Clone 15 or Mendoza Chardonnay which are naturally low cropping clones with the best flavour and body.

This Chardonnay was machine harvested with a third barrel fermented in French oak. Only free run juice was used in the fermentation. 50% of the wine went through malolactic fermentation for complexity and to develop buttery notes. After maturation on lees for 10 months the wine was blended ready for bottling in August 2019.