The 2024 Te Mata Estate is a delicious Chardonnay from one of New Zealand's very best producers that offers everything in balance. There's bright fruit upfront with juicy acidity leading to richness in the mid palate with subtle oak and creamy malolactic characters leading to a fine dry finish. Text book stuff and delightful drinking.
Winery notes (2024 Vintage)
"Estate Chardonnay ’24 shines with a white gold hue and pale honey highlights. It presents a delightful blend of peach, lemon rind, and buttered popcorn, complemented by bright and lively acidity that extends the wine’s long palate. The aroma is reminiscent of warm peach cobbler, intertwined with notes of marzipan, flint, and tarragon. Balanced by the signature racy freshness characteristic of ripe and fine Hawke’s Bay Chardonnay, making the Estate Chardonnay 2024 a standout.
Estate Chardonnay ’24 combines the best of traditional and modern winemaking. This involved tank fermentation to preserve the vibrant varietal aromas and clear, fresh fruit expression along with some barrel fermentation, barrel maturation on gross lees, and malolactic fermentation to enhance the complexity, richness and integration."
5 Stars & 93/100 Sam Kim, Wine Orbit, May 2025 (2024 Vintage)
"It's elegantly expressed on the nose, showing white flesh peach, fig, oatmeal, subtle vanilla, and roasted cashew aromas. The palate delivers succulent fruit flavours with creamy flow, backed by finely pitched acidity, finishing lingering and stylish. At its best: now to 2029."
91/100 Gary Walsh, The Wine Front, July 2025 (2024 Vintage)
"This is a fresh-faced and juicy wine as at now, quite fruity, with peach and pear, a nip of grapefruit, a little spice and green herb, very slight struck match. It pulls a little finer in the mouth with bright citrus acidity, again a spray of green herb and lime zest through the gently tropical fruit, finishing with a spicy tang and solid length, a bit of flint on exit. Some green olive. Needs a bit of time to settle but it’s a lively wine of interest."