Yealands Reserve Marlborough Chardonnay 2020

Description

• Delicate oak
• Tropical fruit
• Stonefruit
• Long finish

This beautiful pale-gold chardonnay has intense aromas of ripe stone fruit and melon, with delicate oak nuances. The palate shows layers of tropical fruit, lees complexity and hints of oak with a long elegant finish.

This Chardonnay was handpicked at full ripeness from the stunning Medway vineyard in the Awatere Valley, renowned for having extremely tough growing conditions with very hard soils and huge diurnal shifts. The fluctuating temperatures enabled great flavour to develop during the hot days, yet retain natural acidity and freshness from the cold nights.

They were incredibly lucky to be able to continue to create these wines during the global pandemic crisis. For this reason, the 2020 wines carry some very unique memories. The 2020 growing season was very dry, which meant disease pressure was low and some timely light rains kept just enough water flowing in our rivers. They had a classic Marlborough autumn with warm days and cool nights, which created this season’s wines with their signature fresh natural acidity and intense fruit flavours.

A combination of handpicked and machine harvested fruit was picked ideal ripeness and gently pressed. The juice was settled and racked off solids then fermented with a range of vessels, temperatures and yeast strains to give complexity of aroma and mouth feel. After aging on yeast lees with regular stirring, the batches were racked, blended, stabilised and filtered prior to bottling.

Food Pairing: Beautifully matched with cheese boards, fish and chips and creamy pasta dishes.