Te Awanga Estate The Loom Hawke’s Bay Reserve Chardonnay 2018 $34 Glossy, golden and going gangbusters on the pineapple and peach front, this Rod McDonald creation just powers across the palate leaving a comets tail of caramelised spices, buttered crumpet crumbs, grapefruit zest and tropical tastiness abound. It’s silky, succulent and seriously sexy to sip. … Read More
Petane Station Esk Valley Single Vineyard Edelzwicker 2019 $30 Edelzwicker wine is essentially made from white grapes which are harvested and fermented together. It’s all a bit loose and there are no set rules with what grapes can be used and those grapes can also be made into wine separately and then blended together. Historically, … Read More
Pegasus Bay Virtuoso Waipara Chardonnay 2016 $60 I don’t know what Mat Donaldson and the team at Pegasus Bay did in their past lives, but clearly they were lovely to puppies, helped lots of elderly people across the street, paid their taxes and put teaspoons of sugar water out for tired bumblebees to drink, because … Read More
Peter Lehmann H & V Barossa Cabernet Sauvignon 2016 $22 Trust the team at Peter Lehmann to consistently bust out richly structured cabernet sauvignon. I loved the 2015 and the 2016 is sexier still. It shows their smoke and vanilla signature on the nose due to the combo of French and American oak barrels it’s … Read More
Leveret Estate Library Edition Hawke’s Bay Merlot Cabernet 2009 $28 It’s not every day that you get to taste newly-released library stock of a ten-year-old merlot cabernet blend, and I’ll tell you this for a dollar. It’s pretty much vanilla and prune-infused perfection in a glass. Softly-styled and oozing into the bricky-red colour spectrum, it’s … Read More
Big Sky Te Muna Road Martinborough Pinot Noir 2016 $40 I love the little depiction of the Southern Cross on the label of this Katherine Jacobs and Jeremy Corban-crafted wine, it fits with the clean, unfussy image of a couple focused on maintaining fruit purity and plushness of style. The ancient Te Muna Terraces are … Read More
Brightwater Vineyards Te Kāhu Nelson Pinot Noir 2016 $26.99 Three years on from harvest and the wine is taking on a lovely brick-red hue and aromas that lead you down the wild side of the hedge. Named after the native harrier hawk which patrols the vineyards of Gary and Valley Neale, it’s softly savoury and … Read More
Cicada Marlborough Gewürztraminer 2018 $19.99 I’ve been a huge fan of this wine since I first tasted it back in 2016. Each vintage since has been slightly different, but this 2018 version is all kinds of crispy-fresh in terms of mouthfeel, loaded with stonefruit, ginger-kissed and crammed with spice, it’s a plush, exotic style with … Read More
Black Estate Home North Canterbury Chardonnay 2018 $42 The Home Vineyard sits 6 kilometres north east of the Waipara Junction, in the Omihi sub-district of North Canterbury’s Waipara Valley. The un-grafted, Mendoza-clone chardonnay vines this wine was made from were planted in 1994 and since 2010 have been grown using organic and biodynamic practices, resulting … Read More
Pegasus Bay Prima Donna Waipara Pinot Noir 2015 $95 From the second the first whiff of cocoa-covered cherries, black tea, wild berries, truffle and spice assail your nostrils, you know there’s no escape from its clutches. It’s a dense, deliciously structured, statuesque example of what Waipara is capable of. So lush, plush and poised, it’s … Read More