Te Mata Estate Elston Hawke's Bay Chardonnay 2023

Description

Grapefruit, Oak, Peach

In the glass, Elston Chardonnay 2023 exudes a radiant golden hue. Its aroma is a captivating blend of grapefruit, white peach, vanilla, and roasted nuts, interwoven with subtle charred nuances and flinty undertones. The palate presents exquisite freshness and structure with lemon brûlée, peach, toasty brioche notes and refreshing citrus. Elston Chardonnay 2023 is graceful, impeccably balanced, and finishes long and satisfying, with a subtle saline quality. Elston ’23 will continue to develop in bottle for six to eight years from harvest.

Elston is named for Elston Hall in Nottinghamshire, the ancestral home of Charles Darwin’s family. Darwin’s ‘theory of natural selection’ forms the basis of modern evolutionary theory, the foundation of biology. The wyvern symbol of Elston Hall appears on the label.

The superb quality of the 2023 vintage was immediately apparent in the fully ripe grapes that were hand-harvested from their separate, individual plots within Te Mata Estate’s vineyards between 22 February and 15 March 2023.

Each parcel was gently whole-cluster pressed, cold settled and racked to new and seasoned French oak barrels for fermentation. The resulting wines remained in contact with their yeast lees, with a number going through malolactic fermentation. The finest lots were selected for further maturation, spending a total of 11 months in barrel with 36% being new oak.