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Buy OnlineUnkel is a small organic vineyard & minimal intervention winery run by husband and wife duo Rob and Kate Burley, located in the picturesque growing region of Nelson/Tasman, New Zealand. Our wines are lovingly handcrafted in order to respect and portray a true sense of time & place.
“Unkel” (variation of the spelling of Uncle), is about working with Mother Nature in the Vineyard to produce the highest quality fruit that we can obtain from her. Once in the winery, rather than being that hands-on, overbearing parent or father figure, you can think of us more like that cruisy, fun, slightly wild Uncle in your life.
Winery notes (2021 Vintage)
"Aromatics of butterscotch, toffee apple, fresh bread and fennel. Textural and creamy, with a slight oxidative edge, a hint of lemon pith and a salivating salinity to finish.
Whole-bunch pressed Chardonnay settled overnight before being racked to and fermented in a mixture of puncheon and barrique. Aged on gross lees for 10 months, then racked to stainless steel and aged for a further 6 months before being bottled in October 2022."
Reviews for the 2020 vintage below…
93/100 Mike Bennie, The Wine Front, February 2023 (2020 Vintage)
"Smoky, struck match and crushed rock scents over lime, just-ripe peach, green apple. The palate is skittish in the best sense, lively, tight, crisp and then falls into a juiciness and stony finish. It’s got strong smoky things going, reduction here, but the crunch and drive of the wine is all about tightly round, zesty chardonnay fruit at a leaner end of the spectrum despite that juicy element. You’ll have to come at it with reductive characters in mind, but this marries fruit and that well."
David Walker Bell, WineFolio.co.nz, March 2023 (2020 Vintage)
"The Luta ‘Echoes’ Chardonnay 2020 is named after those clay soils, and is the premium range. 10 months in 5-8 year old puncheons. Aromatic, with grapefruit, red apple, white peach and pear on the nose. Dry and buoyed by a wave of crisp acidity it has bags of tight structure into the palate. A grip of pithy peach-skin phenolic underlines the fleshy fruit. Drinking well now, but should loosen some of those edges in a couple of years."
