2024 Whitehaven Marlborough Chardonnay

VITICULTURE & VINIFICATION

Harvest Dates: 5th March – 23rd March 2024

Vineyards: Our Chardonnay is sourced from two vineyard sites, Balvonie and Pauls Road, comprising four different Chardonnay clones, Mendoza (75%), clone 95 (11%), clone 15 (10%) and clone 1066 (4%). Vines are trained to two or three canes on a vertical trellis, with balanced pruning, shoot thinning, tucking, and trimming to achieve an open, healthy canopy and clean, ripe fruit. 

Climate: Unlike the previous two years, the growing season leading into the 2024 vintage began after a dry winter, with the soil water balance in deficit. Fewer inflorescences generally and then a protracted flowering window in November and December, resulted in poor fruit set and fewer berries per bunch than the average in most areas. Dry conditions persisted for the duration of the growing season, minimising disease threats and resulting in clean fruit at harvest. A spell of warm weather through late December and January, in combination with the lighter crop, resulted in a rapid physiological advancement against the long-term average.  This trend continued until the start of harvest in early March. Fortuitously, the headwaters of the Wairau and Awatere River systems received enough rain to keep irrigation schemes open through the season and into harvest, at which point a return to cool, crisp days became the norm.  

Winemaking: The fruit was hand-picked and immediately whole-bunch pressed.  The heavy pressings were kept separate to minimise the phenolics.  The free run juice was lightly settled overnight, before being racked to a stainless-steel tank, where it was inoculated to start fermentation.  Halfway through fermentation, the wine was transferred to French oak of which 22% was new, 10% one year old and 68% older oak and predominantly 500L puncheons. The wine underwent full malolactic fermentation and was aged in barrel on lees, for 10 months, before being blended to tank and filtered ahead of bottling.

ACCOLADES