Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This smells more ripe with an almost candied set of fruit aromas on offer combined with a citrusy edge and oak that is fresh and wound in tight. The palate is super succulent, the acidity really taut, and this harnesses rich flavors and draws them long and deep. Delivers plenty of flavor with balance.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2012 Craighall Chardonnay gives subtle notes of warm peaches, marzipan, honeycomb and lightly buttered toast with a suggestion of flint. Beginning to open-out in the mouth with some citrusy accents lifting the toasty stone fruit flavors, it concludes with great persistence and freshness.
One of the most popular and versatile white wine grapes, Chardonnay offers a wide range of flavors and styles depending on where it is grown and how it is made. While it tends to flourish in most environments, Chardonnay from its Burgundian homeland produces some of the most remarkable and longest lived examples. California produces both oaky, buttery styles and leaner, European-inspired wines. Somm Secret—The Burgundian subregion of Chablis, while typically using older oak barrels, produces a bright style similar to the unoaked style. Anyone who doesn't like oaky Chardonnay would likely enjoy Chablis.
Part of the Wairarapa region in the southern end of the country’s North Island, Martinborough is a bucolic appellation full of artisan, lifestyle wine producers. Above all else, their goals are to tend vineyards for low yields and create wines of supreme quality. Pinot noir is the main grape variety here, occupying over half of the land under vine.
Comparing topography, climate and soils, the region is nearly identical to Marlborough except that it produces top quality reds on the regular.