Mahi Marlborough Chardonnay 2024

Review

James Suckling (JamesSuckling.com): 93/100. Precise and delicious with aromas of sweet lemons, poached peaches and mild spices, following through to a medium body with fresh acidity. Vivid and balanced. The focused finish is long and textured. Drink or hold.

Tasting Note

This wine is a complex, textural wine that exhibits the slight creaminess on the mid-palate. Lovely aromas of peach, quince, apple, vanilla and stone. The structure still retains acidity giving length and freshness. Silky and fine on the finish.

Aromas and flavours:

Additional information

Type: White wine

Grape variety: 100% Chardonnay

Alcohol: 13.5% vol

Food match: creamy chicken casserole or rich seafood chowder.

Vineyard: Marlborough, New Zealand. This fruit comes from three vineyards; the Taylor Vineyard (19%) which is in the Rapaura area, the Twin Valleys vineyard (75%), which we have been working with since 2003 and ten rows of Clone 1066 (6%) from the Mahi home block.

Vintage: "This year, our 24th, was again distinctive and was our earliest finish ever. It always seems that winemakers are raving about the latest vintage, but I know that I can quite comfortably say that this vintage looks like it will be in the top five that I have ever worked. The fruit was possibly the cleanest we have ever seen, the crops were small, the rainfall low and the flavours ripe. We had a cool snap early-mid December, which is when we were flowering, then an amazing period through the rest of December and January, before 'normal' temperatures in February and a cooler March. Because of the coolness over flowering, we ended up with low pollination, and low crops, which ripened well through that warm period but also retained the acidity and freshness as February and March were not super-hot. A stunner, and so easy to work!"

Winemaking: The aim for this Chardonnay is to retain a fresh structure with a complex palate. It is the vineyards, wild-ferment and barrel characters that make up the complex nose and palate. All of the vines were intensively hand-tended, and the grapes hand-picked and then taken to the winery for whole-cluster pressing. Only using the free-run portion, the resulting juice went straight to French oak barrels without any additions and fermented with indigenous yeast from the various vineyards. After fermentation the wine sat on yeast lees for eleven months prior to blending and bottling.

Residual sugar: <1.0 g/l

Titratable acidity: 6.9 g/l

Bottle size: 0.75l

Notice: contains sulphites

Cellaring potential: 2030+

Closure: Screwcap

Ingredients: Grapes, sugar, carbon dioxide, preservatives and antioxidants: sulphites. Bottled in a protective atmosphere..

Produced and bottled by: Mahi Wines Ltd., 9 Terrace Rd, PO Box 33, Renwick, Marlborough, New Zealand