BLANK CANVAS REED CHARDONNAY 2024

Winery notes (2024 Vintage)
"The Reed Vineyard Chardonnay is a wine of remarkable texture and depth. Its high toned aromas of white peach, grapefruit, and grilled toast intertwine beautifully with subtle flint and silex complexities. The vivid, finely-tuned acidity carries the powerful yet restrained oak with precision and poise. Cultivated by Chardonnay artisans Pete and Anne Reed, these meticulously cared-for vines thrive in the clay loam soils at the confluence of the Wairau and Waihopai rivers. You may enjoy the wine in its youth for its crystalline purity, or cellar it to discover the layers of tertiary development over the years to come."

97/100 Susie Barrie MW & Peter Richards MW (UK), Susie & Peter New Zealand Wines of the Year 2026 (2024 Vintage)
"Sourced from growers Pete and Anne Reed on a vineyard that sits in central Wairau, on an elevated terrace near the confluence of the Waihopai and Wairau Rivers. The site allows for slow, even ripening and the development of fine acidity and structure – qualities that were exacerbated by the exceptional 2024 vintage, which naturally gave low yields and vibrant acidities due to low night-time temperatures. Hand picking, whole-bunch pressing, wild ferments in French oak puncheons (40% new) and oak ageing for 11 months has given an exceptionally well defined and compelling style packed full of flinty, citric, nutty, toasty, smoky flavours and a vibrant, tense finish. ‘Is this the best one we’ve made so far..?’ muses Thomson while we taste. Irrespective: it’s fabulous. And still very young – this is a wine that will age well too, given its natural vibrancy and tension."

96/100 & Top 100 New Zealand Wines of 2025, JamesSuckling.com (2024 Vintage)
"So perfumed and full of character, with wild, energetic power,offering aromas of beeswax, dried rosemary, crunchy stone fruit and savoryorange peel. Medium- to full-bodied with tense, lively acidity and a tightphenolic structure, showing expressive fruit, smoke, minerals and crushedstones at the end. A beautiful wine."

95/100 Shanteh Wale, James Halliday's Wine Companion (2024 Vintage)
"The Reed vineyard is located in the Central Wairau, where the Wairau meets the Waihopai River. Matured in new and seasoned French oak puncheons (40% new oak). The wine is bursting with peach and ripe pineapple, toasty oak that glimmers and gleams in glossy furniture lacquer and cedar spice. Yuzu curd and papaya flavours heighten with each sip. Oak amplifies the fruit yet still manages an energetic shift into creamy kefir in the mid-palate. Toast and honey. Persistent, zesty and warm, with excellent flavour length. A show-stopper."

95/100 Jamie Goode, WineAnorak.com (2024 Vintage)
"Concentrated, fine, mineral and expressive. A powerful wine with lovely citrus intensity, layered complexity and good acidity. Such refinement here allied to power. Amazing."

Rated Excellent & 94/100 Cameron Douglas MS, August 2025 (2024 Vintage) 
"A delicious wine with a fine balance between fruit power and wine maker inputs. Aromas of fresh white and yellow stone fruits, grapefruit peel and apple. These fruit ideas are framed by a a judicious and delicate hand showing fine lees and barrel spices, some newer wood and definitively older barrel suggestions. Full-bodied with a satin mouthfeel then fine tannins and plenty of acidity. A wine that will age well with best drinking from 2026 through 2032."

94/100 Erin Larkin, RobertParker.com, Wine Advocate, April 2026 (2024 Vintage)
"The 2024 Reed Chardonnay is reductive and spicy on the nose, with freshly picked curry leaf, white peach, green apple and green olive brine. In the mouth, the wine is savoury and layered with reduction, which carries through to the finish. Very good wine here, the fruit is restrained/delicate and sits beneath the winemaking, while the finish is long."

17.5/20 Julia Harding, JancisRobinson.com (2024 Vintage)
"Like the Greywacke, this is marked by smoky/flinty reduction and has that zesty clementine-peel character as well as mealy, creamy roundness. This is less extreme on the palate, with excellent fruit at the core. Deep, gently chewy and elegant. All clementine on the mouth-watering finish."