Novum Riverbrook Vineyard Marlborough Chardonnay 2024

Description

Apricot, Hazelnut, Oak

"Fantastic wine, taut and youthful with a bouquet of flinty, fresh stone and citrus fruits, a positive, gentle reductive layer and mineral, fine lees complexity. A dry wine with plenty of weight and a satin mouthfeel, flavours range from white apricot and peach to apple and sweet grapefruit. Layers of wood introduce fine tannins and a natural wood sweetness, as well as added complexity and length. Well made, with best drinking from day of purchase through to 2032+" Cameron Douglas, Master Sommelier, Dec 2025

With a youthful pale gold hue, this is a finely concentrated, elegant Chardonnay. The nose opens to a heady combination of pineapple, pear and citrus, along with a fresh minerality beautifully underpinned by subtle creamy nutty oak, brioche, nougat and hints of cinnamon. The palate follows, offering at the heart a satisfying combination of lemon curd sweetness, orange zest and softer savoury notes of hazelnut and sour dough, balanced by a crisp, mineral acidity and linearity driving a long, lingering finish.

The fruit for this wine comes from a beloved Chardonnay block in the central Wairau Plains of Marlborough. Planted entirely with the Mendoza clone, our family can’ t remember the exact year that it was planted, but it was likely between 1979 and 1980. Originally a riverbed, this block is naturally warm during the day and night, thanks to the radiating effect of the exposed greywacke rock lying beneath the vines. The rock radiates heat up into the canopy, making this vineyard an ideal site for ripening Chardonnay.

This was the year when the La Nina weather system that had been active in the Southern Pacific ocean for the previous three years changed to El Nino. In El Nino years, Marlborough experiences longer dry, even hot periods, making these ideal years for grape growing. The 2024 growing season really illustrated this. Initially wet in early spring due to the hangover of La Nina, by late December the longer hotter days had arrived and our fruit ripened slowly gaining flavour whilst retaining a crunchy acidity.

The grapes were hand-harvested, then whole-bunch pressed using a very gentle press cycle. A small addition of sulphur was added at the press to protect the wine from oxidising. The juice was cold settled for 12 hours before being transferred to barrel (10% new oak) with light lees for a wild fermentation. Post fermentation, the wine remained on lees in barrel, and stirred monthly on the full moon. After 13 months, the wine was gently transferred out of barrel for bottling. No fining agents were added – just a small amount of bentonite for clarification and sulphur to ensure the wine will age well. Bottled March 2025.