Winemaker Notes
Pale gold. Green apple and honeysuckle, with lemon honey and a little vanilla from the oak. Medium-bodied, with a focused, mineral length and flavours of crisp apple, lemon and peach. Made to age gracefully; weight and honeyed flavours will result from cellaring.
Pair with spring vegetables, grilled fish, goat’s cheese soufflé, pork terrine, and apple or pear salads.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
From a renowned Marlborough vineyard, this deftly expresses much that's great about dry Chenin: It's gently fruity with aromas of apples, melon, even strawberry, with a hint of white spice. The palate is waxy in texture with a big zing of citrusy acidity and a mouthwatering lemony note that lingers on the finish.
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Wine Spectator
Offers a lovely, lush mix of tangerine, mango sorbet and candied ginger flavors, along with lemon blossom, chamomile and orange peel notes on a smooth and silky frame.
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James Suckling
Aromas of lemon sherbet, limes and passion-fruit curd on the nose. The medium-bodied palate has focused acidity and creamy texture, giving notes of cookies, straw and flint. Nicely balanced with an underlying tension.
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Vinous
The 2023 Chenin Blanc Wrekin, from the increasingly renowned Wrekin vineyard, is dry, pure and racy. In its youthful state, it remains a little unexpressive, waiting for time to reveal its true character. Flavor-wise, it is a touch shy, but Chenin is hardly an aromatic variety, offering up white talc and apple pastry flavors. Bottle age will allow it to develop further layers and some tertiary characters which will add to its complexity, but it will always remain a mid-weight, lightly phenolic style with firm acidity.
Unquestionably one of the most diverse grape varieties, Chenin Blanc can do it all. It shines in every style from bone dry to unctuously sweet, oaked or unoaked, still or sparkling and even as the base for fortified wines and spirits. Perhaps Chenin Blanc’s greatest asset is its ever-present acidity, maintained even under warm growing conditions. Somm Secret—Landing in South Africa in the mid 1800s, today the country has double the acreage of Chenin Blanc planted compared to France. There is also a new wave of dedicated producers committed to restoring old Chenin vines.
An icon and leading region of New Zealand's distinctive style of Sauvignon blanc, Marlborough has a unique terroir, making it ideal for high quality grape production (of many varieties). Despite some common generalizations, which could be fairly justified given that Marlborough is responsible for 90% of New Zealand's Sauvignon blanc production, the wines from this region are actually anything but homogenous. At the northern tip of New Zealand’s South Island, the vineyards of Marlborough benefit from well-draining, stony soils, a dry, sunny climate and wide temperature fluctuations between day and night, a phenomenon that supports a perfect balance between berry ripeness and acidity.
The region’s king variety, Sauvignon blanc, is beloved for its pungent, aromatic character with notes of exotic tropical fruit, freshly cut grass and green bell pepper along with a refreshing streak of stony minerality. These wines are made in a wide range of styles, and winemakers take advantage of various clones, vineyard sites, fermentation styles, lees-stirring and aging regimens to differentiate their bottlings, one from one another.
Also produced successfully here are fruit-forward Pinot noirs (especially where soils are clay-rich), elegant Riesling, Pinot gris and Gewürztraminer.