Te Mata Estate Elston Chardonnay 2021

Brilliant white gold in the glass, Elston Chardonnay ’21 has wonderfully intense aromas of golden peach, apricot, and lemon zest. Focused but flowing - this is a wine of precision, power, and poise. On the mouth-watering palate there’s oodles of ripe, white-fleshed fruit, nougat and nutmeg, integrated fine oak tannin, and just a flick of salinity. A long line of sweet citrus acidity and ripe Hawke’s Bay chardonnay fruit run through here.

Te Mata Estate vineyards in the Havelock Hills and Dartmoor Valley.

The superb quality of the 2019 vintage was immediately apparent in the fully ripe grapes that were hand-harvested from their separate, individual plots within Te Mata Estate’s vineyards between 18 and 22 March 2019.

Each parcel was gently whole-cluster pressed, cold settled and racked to new and seasoned French oak barrels for fermentation. The resulting wines remained in contact with their yeast lees, with a number going through malolactic fermentation. The finest lots were selected for further maturation, spending a total of 11 months in barrel.