TE MATA ELSTON CHARDONNAY 2023

Elston Chardonnay is one of the icons of New Zealand wine – since the first vintage in 1984 Te Mata have been refining the wine style, tweaking the techniques and understanding the vines resulting in something quite special with every vintage release.

Winery notes (2023 Vintage)
"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.

In the glass, Elston Chardonnay 2023 exudes a radiant golden hue.  Its aroma is a captivating blend of grapefruit, white peach, vanilla, and roasted nuts, interwoven with subtle charred nuances and flinty undertones. The palate presents exquisite freshness and structure with lemon brûlée, peach, toasty brioche notes and refreshing citrus. Elston Chardonnay 2023 is graceful, impeccably balanced, and finishes long and satisfying, with a subtle saline quality.

Each parcel was gently whole-cluster pressed, cold settled and racked to new and seasoned French oak barrels for fermentation. The resulting wines remained in contact with their yeast lees, with a number going through malolactic fermentation. The finest lots were selected for further maturation, spending a total of 11 months in barrel with 36% being new oak."

5 Stars & 96/100 Sam Kim, Wine Orbit, February 2025 (2023 Vintage)
"This is complex and enticing on the nose, showing ripe peach, lemon peel, roasted hazelnut, and savoury pastry characters with a subtle vanilla overtone. The palate displays terrific poise and tension, wonderfully complemented by creamy texture and bright acidity, making it splendidly structured and balanced with a sustained, graceful finish. At its best: 2026 to 2038."

94/100 Gary Walsh, The Wine Front, December 2024 (2023 Vintage)
"Bright fruit, citrus and white nectarine, almond, fine spiced oak, a bit of bread dough. Juicy, white fruit and citrus, a bit of flint, a burst of flavour, some saline characters, a slight fresh pineapple thing, with a lively gently savoury/toasted hazelnut finish of excellent length. It’s a brighter, tighter, more restrained iteration of Elston, and I like that about it.  It certainly has some get-up-and-go."

94/100 Erin Larkin, Robert Parker's Wine Advocate, January 2025 (2023 Vintage)
"A profusion of white pineapple and green apple, roasted hazelnut/cashew and white flowers. It is impressive, flavoursome and almost achingly intense, with great length through the finish. Recommended."

94/100 Emma Jenkins MW, Decanter, March 2025 (2023 Vintage)
"Always a very supple and seamless wine. There’s plenty of peach, lemon, guava, crème brûlée and cashew to enjoy, plus hints of bran biscuit and a flick of flint on the nose. The silky palate has a very nicely judged line of acidity that draws a thread right through the wine, adding tautness to the ripe fruit and emphasising the long finish."