Winemaker Notes
This wine has fragrant lemon/lime blossom aromas on the nose that typify the lovely perfume from fruit grown in Hunting Hill. This wine shares some of the characters with the neighbouring Mate’s Vineyard with its attractive floral notes and restrained elegance. The Hunting Hill vineyard has a particularly pure character that, in its youth, displays a tight and crisp palate. Bottle age will reveal the power and concentration that lies beneath the surface.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Stunning nose of citrus blossom. Certainly not the most powerful or dramatic chardonnay out there, but there’s great finesse here, the fruit and oak beautifully integrated through the very long finish that's as fresh as a mountain stream. Drink or hold. Screw cap.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2014 Hunting Hill Chardonnay has not yet crested the hill of middle age. Amazingly, the wine shows real energy and chutzpah on the mid-palate, bounding and leaping across the tongue in a variety of directions. This is busy, racy and full of intense fruit flavor. I'd still suggest it has a ways to go yet with regard to stilling. On the flip side, it offers a brilliant two-sided coin of drinking experience: one of bottle-age complexity, the other of youthful rambunctiousness.
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Vinous
The 2014 Chardonnay Hunting Hill retains a bright lemon hue that would leave you astonished if you had this blind and found out it was already ten years old. It's a little muted on the nose with a hint of dustiness. The Hunting Hill comes from relatively young vines at this stage (13 years), but there's no doubting its concentration and the linear power that runs through its fleshy, ripe core. This wine extends into a lengthy, sinewy finish, with apricot fruit meeting its kernel.
Founded in 1944 by Mick Brajkovich, wife Katé and son Maté, Kumeu River was one of the early pioneers in Auckland, New Zealand, that helped to establish its reputation as a world-class wine region. Still family owned and run, Kumeu River continues to pioneer new frontiers: winemaker Michael Brajkovich became New Zealand’s first member of the prestigious Institute of Masters of Wine, London, they have been testing and championing screw cap closures for close to 20 years and the winery has gone on to become the globally recognized benchmark for non-Burgundy produced Chardonnay. All Kumeu River wines are hand-harvested, whole bunch pressed and demonstrate exclusive use of indigenous yeast fermentation.
The Chardonnays of Kumeu River have gained a strong foothold within the international market, continuously and consistently receiving outstanding accolades. The winery is a globally recognized benchmark for age-worthy Chardonnay outside of Burgundy.
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.
Grape-growers in the local subregions of Clevedon, Matakana and Waiheke Island, focusing on vineyard techniques to maximize quality, are producing very fine Bordeaux Blends from local grapes. Auckland is also an industrial area where winemakers can produce quality wines based on sourced grapes from neighboring regions.