It’s a rare thing to see these days, blending two vintages of a still wine together (multi-vintage blending is common in sparklings), yet winemaker Max Annabell has made this work. A tiny pinot gris harvest in 2015 meant the wine was kept aside and when an equally tiny (but delicious) vintage followed in 2016, he decided to throw convention aside and combine them. Buckets of pear, ginger, fresh apple and quince flavours are the result of fruit grown on steep, north-facing, limestone slopes of Central Hawke’s Bay, fermented long and slow in old French barrels. Rich, textural and off-dry.
