Esk Valley Estate Chardonnay 2022

This is a medium bodied and elegant Hawkes Bay Chardonnay. Its flavour profile is a mix of stonefruit, grilled nuts, grapefruit and yeasty nuances. It is both complex and delicious.

The fruit for this wine was sourced from vineyards planted in three of Hawkes Bay’s many sub-regions. Gimblett Gravels fruit provides ripe stonefruit characters while our vineyard sites further inland on cooler river terraces above the Ngaruroro River bring acidity and flinty grapefruit notes. Shoot thinning, leaf plucking and bunch thinning are practised in the pursuit of quality.

The individual vineyard parcels were harvested over a 10 day period in early March and fermented in both tank and French barriques (55%). A small portion was encouraged through malo-lactic fermentation to soften the wine and add richness and complexity. The finished wines were left on their fermentation lees with regular stirring until blending and bottling in March 2023. Suitable for a plant based diet.

10 months in French oak barriques, 5% new