Paritua Stone Paddock Hawke's Bay Chardonnay 2023

Description

• French oak
• Ripe peach
• Subtle nougat
• Refreshing style

"It's beautifully fruited and elegantly fragrant, showing ripe peach, rockmelon, subtle vanilla and lemon zest aromas. The palate offers succulent fruit flavours with supple texture and well-pitched acidity, making it smooth and lingering with tasty flavours. At its best: now to 2026" Sam Kim, Wine Orbit, Mar 2023

The 2023 Stone Paddock Chardonnay is a light bodied wine. Showing ripe peach and stone fruit aromas with hints of nougat and Grapefruit. The gentle influence of battonage accentuates the sweet peach flavours, the texture is luscious with a full rich mid palate and zesty acidity accentuated by the grapefruit citrus fruit finish. This Chardonnay is a refreshing style and with time it will grow to a well-rounded wine to be enjoyed now or cellar up to 2028 or longer.

The Chardonnay is planted on the most western part of the vineyard clones 95 and 15 are grown on a standard two cane canopy. Fruit exposure is limited to achieve excellent flavour and phenolics balance.

Several batches of machine harvested fruit were de-stemmed to press. After a slowand gentle pressing cycle the juice was settled and then fermented in stainless steeltanks at relatively warm temperatures, to minimize reductive or flinty notes. About half the wine was fermented in seasoned oak puncheons. We use selected yeast strains to create complexity and depth. The wine is kept on yeast lees for several months with regular lees stirring (battonage) to help develop complexity and richness, before blending, and filtration.