Our Wines

Very bright and clear with just a hint of green this wine first shows lime, lemon and orange blossom aromas with a characteristic, underlying minerality; all evident on a vibrantly aromatic and lifted nose. On the palate high natural carbon dioxide gives a lift that accentuates the bright, fresh citrus and melon flavours, and gives great length and persistence of flavour through a dry, stony finish. A fine balance between acidity and sweetness, both being totally natural, are key to this wines purity and focus.

The grapes for this wine are lightly destemmed before the predominantly whole berries are gently pressed in modern membrane presses. Only the purest ‘cut’ of free run juice is taken separately for settling and racking after 48 hours into temperature controlled stainless steel tanks. This very clean juice is cool fermented with SIHA7 yeast slowly over the next three weeks until the perfect balance between acidity (low in 2011 vintage) and residual sugar allows the ferment to be stopped. Two parcels of Riesling picked on different days were treated this way and kept separate until blending in june. A light fining with casein was carried out to tidy up phenolics in the blended wine, then cold stabilising, filtering through a cross-flow filter and bottling all happened before the end of July.

The vines for this wine grow on our vineyard in the Upper Awatere Valley of Marlborough. Tough growing conditions in this remote site were tempered in 2011 by a great season with plentiful rainfall earlier followed by a dry late summer. Grown on a two cane vertical shoot positioned system the vines are shoot thinned, leaf plucked with total exposure and fruit thinned at veraison. Very clean and disease free the fruit was hung out as long as the weather permitted. Cropping at around 9 tonnes per hectare picking was carried out on the 18th and 20th of April with brix ranging from 21 to 22.