Te Mata Awatea Cabernets/Merlot 2023

Reviews

Erin Larkin, Robert Parker's Wine Advocate (January 2025): 96/100. This wine is thrilling: dusty cassis, bramble, raspberry pip, blood/iodine, sweet tobacco, raw cocoa, violet perfume, tarragon and fennel and a hint of hazelnut/nutmeg. This will evolve beautifully in bottle. I love it. It is a magnificent wine and a tremendous value.

Tasting Note:

With a gleaming crimson core and ruby rim, Awatea Cabernets/Merlot ’23 is enticingly perfumed with blackberry, bay, violets, and vanilla. The satisfying palate is detailed, poised and texturally rewarding, interplaying plum, black olive and sandalwood notes with salinity, refreshing acidity and bright tannin length.

Aromas and flavours:

Additional information

Type: Red wine from New Zealand

Varietals: 33% Cabernet Sauvignon, 52% Merlot, 15% Cabernet Franc

Vineyards: Hawke's Bay, New Zealand. The grapes for Awatea Cabernets/Merlot ’23 were hand harvested from Te Mata Estate’s Hawke’s Bay vineyards between 4 and 18 April 2023.

Winemaking: The separate parcels of grapes were destemmed before a traditional warm-plunged fermentation and extended maceration on skins. The resulting wines were then run to new and seasoned French oak barrels for 15 months. Throughout this time, they were regularly topped and racked. The separate wines were blended in October 2023, then returned to barrel for their second winter. The finished wine was then egg white fined and bottled in November 2024.

The name: Awatea takes its name from the historic ship SS Awatea (a Maori word meaning “Eye of the Dawn”) that sailed the Auckland – Sydney – Wellington route in the late 1930s. The Awatea was requisitioned as a troop transport in WWII and was sunk off Algeria in 1942.

Alcohol: 13.5% vol

Total acidity: 5.4 g/l

Wine style: dry

Bottle size: 0.75l

Notice: Contains sulphites, egg white.

Cellaring potential: 2030+

Closure: Cork

Produced and bottled by: Te Mata Estate, PO Box 8335, Havelock North, Hawkes Bay 4157, New Zealand