Matawhero Church House Barrel Fermented Chardonnay 2022

Famous for our Chardonnay this wine has aromas of ripe peach and melon layered with butterscotch and toasty oak notes. The palate is big, rich and full with great length and weight.

The grapes for this elegant Gisborne Chardonnay are grown from two select parcels from the Tietjen vineyard in the Hexton Hills or "Golden Slopes" appellation of Gisborne. This narrow 10km strip is made up of small parcels of elevated sloping land. Medium to heavy Kaiti clay base is overlaid with 20-30cm of light black topsoil, with influences from the limestone foothills. The site has had a rich history in producing award-winning Chardonnay for over 20 years.

The wine is made from the Mendoza clone of Chardonnay. The vines achieved good ripeness and with low yields came excellent flavours and weight to the fruit.

Harvested in the cool of the morning, the fruit for this wine reached superb ripeness after another warm summer in Gisborne. A portion of the grapes were hand harvested and some machine harvested. With the machine harvested grapes, the juice was cool fermented in tanks till dry and then underwent full malolactic fermentation and spent 4 months on lees. The hand-picked fruit was gently pressed and fermented in a combination of American and European barrels. The barrels selected here are from the parcels we don’t deem quite good enough to make our Irwin "flagship" Chardonnay but are still of exceptional quality to even be considered! The wine also undergoes full malolactic fermentation. The tank portion also spends time on lees in the barrels before the final blending. The wine is then stabilized, filtered and bottled.

Part Barrel and tank fermentation as above