Two Rivers Clos des Pierres Marlborough Chardonnay 2018

Description

"Made from 30-year-old Mendoza clone Chardonnay fermented using indigenous yeasts in 4500-litre cuve. Weighty, mouth-filling wine with bread, peach, struck flint and nutty lees flavours. Slightly phenolic - in a good way. An interesting wine with character" Bob Campbell, Master of Wine, Sep 2019

Bright lemon in colour, the bouquet offers aromas of orange blossom and stone fruit mingled with toasted cumin seeds and struck match. On the palate the wine is focused, opening up to layers of white peach, lemon curd and honeysuckle, over flavours of cinnamon stick and cloves. The artisan winemaking approach has resulted in an elegant and delicious wine, showing great vibrancy, purity of fruit and underlying old vine minerality.

Clos des Pierres is French for place of stones and gives reference to The Spring Vineyard which has extremely stony soils.

Predominately from 25 year old vines, the fruit for this wine was hand harvested, lightly whole bunch pressed and naturally fermented. Intermittent lees stirring was carried out and full malolactic fermentation occurred. The wine was then aged for 11 months in a mixture of new and seasoned French oak barrels, a new French oak cuve and a concrete egg tank. In pursuit of the highest quality, we have not filtered this wine. As a result a harmless residue may remain.

Food Pairing: An ideal pairing with white sauce dishes and hard or smoked cheeses.