Home > Wine by Range > Select Vineyards Wines > "Chalk Ridge" SV Hawkes Bay Viognier 2018

"Chalk Ridge" SV Hawkes Bay Viognier 2018

NZ $24.00

A dry white wine, which exhibits typical Viognier aromas of peach and apricot blossom and ripe stone fruit. A big rich wine full of fruit sweetness delivering a long and satisfying finish

SKU 00954

Category Select Vineyards Wines, Hawkes Bay, Viognier

Description

Winemakers Notes
The fruit for this wine is sourced from the Chalk Ridge block just to the south of Havelock North. It is so named due to the amount of fractured limestone in the soil profile. It is a very steep vineyard and is very difficult to work (too steep for a tractor, so we had to purchase a crawler). The vineyard faces due north and is very warm during the day. The block is always hand-harvested. The fruit was whole bunch pressed and commenced ferment in tank. The juice was then run off to oak (one year old French oak) to complete fermentation and for maturation. The wine came out of oak after four months, was stabilised and bottled.

Analysis

Alc	13.5%
Acid	5.7 g/L
Res sugar	2.5 g/L
pH	3.52

Tasting Notes

Colour:	Very pale in the glass at bottling, but we expect that this wine will pick up pale gold tints with time. Massive tears on the glass indicate a wine of considerable body and richness.
Bouquet:	Very typical Viognier aromas of peach and apricot blossom and ripe stonefruit. Along with this there is a degree of complexity that we seldom see in New Zealand wines. We use the wines of Condrieu as our benchmark for this variety and aromatically this wine is trending in that direction.
Palate:	This is a big rich wine. Like all good Viognier, the palate is very broad and very long. There is a strong core of fruit sweetness running all the way through the wine.

Cellaring
Viognier does not seem to require long cellaring. We expect that this wine will drink well on release and into the medium term.

Food Matches
Rich, weighty and complex it is a great match to white meats and salads.

Suggested wine list description
A dry white wine, which exhibits typical Viognier aromas of peach and apricot blossom and ripe stone fruit. A big rich wine full of fruit sweetness delivering a long and satisfying finish.

Independent Reviewer's Comment
“Fresh, mouthfilling and sweet-fruited, this Havelock North wine was hand-picked and barrel-fermented. It has very good vigour and depth of stonefruit flavours, a subtle seasoning of biscuity oak adding complexity, balanced acidity and some cellaring potential; best drinking mid-2020+” M Cooper

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