Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A spunky chardonnay. There's seductive flinty complexity on the nose, surrounding bright citrus and nectarine fruits, spicy oak and a raw, chalky edge. The palate has folds of beautifully ripe fruit all coiled close. It delivers length and power with an air of classy elegance. Toasted-hazelnut finish. Magic stuff.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2011 Chardonnay is possessed of quite a piercing nose: lemon oil and verbena, white pepper and lanolin and something quite lifted and salty. I like this wine very much. It is definitely showing evolution and some tertiary glints, yet the wine offers intensity, focus and length. On release, Kevin Judd (winemaker) says this was pungently reductive, and yet here today, 14 years from harvest, the wine is flinty, fresh and detailed. It has a dappled, dark/light aspect that I appreciate, a harmonious chiaroscuro of depth of fruit and levity of spice. This is ripe, according to the numbers, but it works so well alongside the acid. 14.5% alcohol.
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Wine Spectator
Distinctive and complex, with a mix of candied orange peel, buttered popcorn, fig, lemon meringue and apricot flavors. Smooth and succulent, presenting a long, juicy finish. Drink now through 2025.
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.
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.