Churton Petit Manseng 2017 2017

The colour of our 2017 Petit Manseng is bright, yellow gold with green illuminated flecks. It has a complex, aromatic bouquet of lemon wood flowers and slightly honeyed quince, with an element of almond or peach kernel. In the mouth our Petit Manseng is full bodied starting sweet and rich with ripe pear, candy peel and a touch of caramel. This leads to a fine long finish with the balance being supplied by racy citrus acidity and a touch of phenolics reminiscent of the graininess in quince.

Our distinctive hillside vineyard above the Waihopai Valley was planted in 2000 with an European approach; close vine spacing and at high density (approx. 5,000/ha). We manage the vineyard according to principles of biodynamics and organics. The first to be planted in New Zealand, our Petit Manseng thrives within our only northwest facing vineyard block - the 10% slope capturing the intensity of the afternoon sun. In 2017, bud burst occurred in late September and was followed by shoot thinning with flowering taking place just before Christmas. We green harvested after veraison in late February and removed laterals from the fruit zone. With very open bunches and thick skin, Petit Manseng is rather resistant to botrytis but even it couldn’t avoid the affects of five continuous days of warm and wet weather over the Easter period. Around 90% of our Petit Manseng berries became infected with botrytis. Fortunately the botrytis was very clean and the berries dried up and started to shrivel in a raisonating process known as passerillé. Our 2017 Petit Manseng was hand-picked on the 5th of May with the raisined bunches boasting 33 brix of sugar.

Hand picked grapes were taken to the winery in 14kg baskets. The grapes were then mashed in 500kg bins for 12 hours to help improve extraction. Pressing the fruit was long and slow taking another 12 hours and the resulting juice was clarified slightly by settling it for a three day period. All juice was then transferred to seasoned demimuid barrels (600L) for a slow fermentation. Wine was aged on lees and in barrel for 12 months in total before a light filtration and bottling in June 2018.