Esk Valley Black Label Hawkes Bay Chardonnay 2008

This is a full bodied but elegant style of Hawkes Bay Chardonnay, exhibiting ripe stone fruit and melon characters, intermingled with hints of butter, grapefruit and oak. The wine is rich in the mouth, but with excellent acidity, complex and long.

 

Region: Hawkes Bay

Variety: Chardonnay

Producer: Esk Valley Estate Ltd

Merchant:

Winemaker Notes: The individual vineyard parcels were kept separate and fermented in a mix of oak barriques (80%) and stainless steel tanks. A combination of cultured and indigenous yeasts were utilised for fermentation and the finished wines were left on lees until blending and bottling in December 2008. Thirty percent of the wine underwent malolactic fermentation in barrel to naturally soften the finished wine.

Viticulture Notes: This wine is blended from fruit sourced from selected vineyard sites round Hawkes Bay. Vineyards in the north at Bay View provide the finished wine with ripe tropical fruit flavours while the cooler sites on river terraces above the Tutaekuri River at Puketapu add a more flinty, grapefruit note. These cooler sites also provide the natural acidity to the blended wine. All of these vineyard sites are intensively managed, and grown on a VSP trellis. Shoot thinning, leaf plucking and bunch thinning are all practiced in the pursuit of quality.

Alcohol: 14.0% %

Residual Sugar: 1.0g/L

Total Acidity: 6.83g/L

ph: 3.27

Cellaring: Enjoy from 2009 - 2012+

Food Match: Ideally suited to rich seafood or white meat dishes.