Te Awanga The Loom Reserve Hawke's Bay Chardonnay 2022

Description

"Elegant and stylish with gorgeous complexity, the wine shows ripe peach, rockmelon, vanilla, hazelnut, and almond meal characters with a touch of flinty note. It's concentrated and wonderfully structured on the palate, delivering excellent depth and persistence. Harmonious and refined with alluring flavours. At its best: now to 2032" Sam Kim, Wine Orbit, Feb 2025

A typical coastal Chardonnay with citrus and stonefruit and lemon zest combined with a toasty biscotti and a light toasty spice. Very textural with excellent volume and weight on the palate. Stonefruit and citrus fla-vous combine with a refreshing fine, acidity to create a wine that promises a long life and gathering complexity.

Te Awanga is a sleepy seaside village. There’s a lot of reasons why it was first settled in the 1800’s, but we’re picking that one of them was probably not that there’s a great point break. A break which works particularly well when the seas are heavy and easterly. In local parlance, ‘the loom’ is the name given to the best wave of the day.

The vineyards of Te Awanga are characterised by shallow volcanic loess soils over deep gravels – ideal for creating wine of great flavour. Underlying these soils is a rising and falling clay pan at about 35 centimetres. Even though it’s a challenge for grape growing, the pan limits vine vigour and is a major factor in concentrating the flavours of the fruit. The coastal climate, with its sea breezes and mild day and night temperatures, is vital in creating slow ripening which also intensifies the flavours of both red and white wines.

Grapes were hand harvested in early March 2022, and whole bunch pressed directly to French oak 225L barriques (25% of which were new). This allows us to retain juice purity and keep the pH low, while start-ing to build complexity. Fermentation and malo-lactic fermentation (100%) were wild. The wine was then left on gross lees for 15 months before being bottled and un-fined in July 2023. We work hard in the vine-yard and winery to create an environment which allows minimal handling and as a result have produced a wine that’s got as much flavour and character as we could manage.