Winemaker Notes
Brilliant gold with an edge of bright green, Elston ’15 is like a Hawke’s Bay peach picked fresh from the tree. Intricate aromas of ripe stonefruit, nectarine, lemon zest and honey soften into Crème brûlée, citrus and roast nuts. Crisp chardonnay fruit balanced against fine, refreshing acidity gives this wine immaculate poise. Te Mata Estate’s leading lady, Elston ’15 is chardonnay royalty.
Elston is named for Elston Hall in Nottinghamshire, the ancestral home of Charles Darwin’s family. Darwin’s ‘theory of natural selection’ forms the basis of modern evolutionary theory, the foundation of biology. The wyvern symbol of Elston Hall appears on the label.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A rich and dense white with a fresh and lively backbone. Cooked apple and rosemary and olive oil undertones. Full and vivid. Exciting New World wine with an Old World sensibility. Drink now.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Te Mata's 2015 Elston Chardonnay is hitting its stride and should continue to drink well for a few more years. It shows lovely integration of oak and fruit, as they've fused together into an amalgam that's nearly impossible to pull apart into separate components. There's ripe stone fruit, hints of pencil shavings and a fine line of citrus that prolongs the finish, all rolled into a medium to full-bodied wine with a definite sense of grace and style.
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Wine Enthusiast
From one of the oldest grape growing sites in New Zealand and from a relatively ripe, concentrated vintage, this wine shows all of the complex and intense fruit notes you would expect. A mélange of stone fruit and pineapple aromas are bolstered by touches of honey and butterscotch. The palate is creamy and full, but its life raft is the tangy, almost crunchy acidity. The finish is long and salty. Drink now–2023.
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 eclectic region on the east coast of the North Island, Hawkes Bay extends from wide, fertile, coastal plains, inland, to the coast range, whose peaks reach as high as 5,300 feet. While the flatter areas were historically more popular because they are easier to cultivate, their alluvial soils can be too fertile for vines. In the late 20th century, the drive for quality led growers to the hills where soils are free-draining, limestone-rich and more suited to producing high quality wines.
Over the passing of time, the old Ngaruroro River laid down deep, gravelly beds, which were subsequently exposed after a huge flood in the 1860’s. In the 1980s growers identified this stretch, which continues for approximately 800 ha, and named it the Gimblett Gravels. The zone has proven to be ideal for the production of excellent red wines, particularly Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Syrah.
Today the area takes well-earned recognition for its Bordeaux blends and other reds. Expressive of intense stewed red and black berry with gentle herbaceous characters, Gimblett Gravels wines are suggestive of their cool climate origin, and on par with other top-notch Bordeaux blends around the globe.
Chardonnay is the top white grape in Hawkes Bay, making elegant wines, strong in stone fruit character. Sauvignon blanc comes in close behind, notable for its tropical, fruit forward qualities.