The Hunting Lodge Home Block Waimauku Chardonnay 2019 $64
Grown on the Waimauku Clays, half an hour or so’s drive out west of the Auckland CBD on the Northwestern motorway, Chief Winemaker Pete Turner has been carefully watching over their 80acre estate to finally decide if and when it’d produce chardonnay worthy of their flagship ‘Home Block’ title. 2019 did the business. “It was an outstanding vintage – warm, dry conditions and low yields produced ripe fruit with great concentration. This is undoubtedly our best vintage released to date,” he says. From 18yo vines comes a wine very much comfortable in its own skin. Golden in the glass and scented with grilled grapefruit, roast nectarine and peach crumble, it’s acidity it fresh and frisky and because it’s elegantly structured and not a fruit salad bomb by any stretch. Elegantly toasty, with nutty notes complimenting the baked citrus characters- it’s a delicious thing that really opens up in the glass.
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