Selected for the Fine Wines of New Zealand List
Winery notes (2019 Vintage)
"Breakfast or dessert? Toasted brioche, lightly buttered with a generous dollop of grapefruit marmalade, or a lemon curd tart garnished with lemon blossom petals and sprinkled with toasted hazelnuts. An elaborate fusion of sweet-scented aromatics and a smoky, nutty savouriness that carries through onto a wonderfully dry, flinty palate. A rich, opulent wine that has great concentration, tight structure and excellent ageing potential.
The juice went through a natural indigenous yeast fermentation in French oak barriques (16% new), with the final phase continuing for many months. The wine received occasional lees stirring and underwent a complete malolactic fermentation. It was transferred out of oak after 11 months and bottled in November 2020."
5 Stars & 95/100 Bob Campbell MW, The Real Review, June 2022 (2019 Vintage)
"Rich, smooth-textured wine with grapefruit, a hint of green apple, freshly baked bread, oyster shell and classy French oak flavours. Still quite closed and youthful with masses of potential for bottle development."
Rated Excellent & 95/100 Cameron Douglas MS, May 2022 (2019 Vintage)
"A totally captivating bouquet laced with aromas of baked stone fruits and wood spices. There’s a stony soil mineral quality that sits just beneath scents of apple and white peach, baking spices and a fine flinty quality. On the palate – a wine of texture and complexity, a core of fruit and oak spices, some battonage toastiness and a long weighty, finish. Complex and youthful, textured and dry, a wine that will continue to age and develop with best drinking from 2023 through 2030+."
Reviews for the 2018 vintage below…
5 Stars Michael Cooper (2018 Vintage)
"Already delicious, but very ageworthy, the 2018 vintage was grown mostly in the lower reaches of the Brancott Valley, and at Fairhall, hand-harvested, and fermented and matured for 18 months in French oak barriques (20 per cent new). Bright, light lemon/green, with a fragrant, complex, slightly smoky bouquet, it is mouthfilling, with concentrated stonefruit flavours, finely integrated oak adding complexity, and a very harmonious, well-rounded finish. Drink now or cellar."
Rated Excellent, 5 Stars & 94/100 NZ Wine Rater, July 2021 (2018 Vintage)
"This is a very intense, complex, funky, voluminous nose with lemon-rind, grapefruit, and peach fruit with buttered popcorn, and freshly baked whole-meal bread barrel-ferment characters. A rich, opulent wine with a creamy mid-palate texture but plenty of salivating, fresh acidity to balance. A smart, satisfying wine with a lot to offer."