Mystery Marlborough Chardonnay 2020 (03)

Description

• French oak
• Stonefruit
• Minerality
• Complex

"It's gorgeously refined and elegant, showing grapefruit, nectarine, nougat and oatmeal nuances on the nose, leading to a concentrated palate offering expansive mouthfeel and fine texture. Brilliantly structured by bright acidity, finishing persistent and engaging. At its best: now to 2026" Sam Kim, Wine Orbit, Mar 2022

This wine has the saline minerality upfront while also exhibiting stonefruit and a citrus backbone that we expect from Marlborough Chardonnay. A underlying influence from the French oak is giving the wine complexity, structure and persistence on the palate.

This fruit is handpicked from Brooklands Vineyard. It is one of our own vineyards situated in the Southern Valleys sub region of Marlborough, a sub region renowned for its clay content giving plenty of grunt to the vines and concentrated flavour and mid palate to the wine. silt and clay. The fruit we get from this site is characterised by the soil type and the resulting wine has a mineral/saline character to the palate. Vines are 3 cane vertical shoot position. Our vineyard team lay down just enough buds to ensure a lower crop from these vines. Later in the season the vines are visited once more to ensure the bunches per shoot are what we were expecting.

Extended maturation in french oak barriques. The juice was transferred directly to French oak barrels for fermentation on full solids. Each barrel was filled as the juice was pressed resulting in 20 barrels that were significantly different from each other due to different solids levels achieved through the pressing process.