Larry McKenna loves a Chardonnay made in a fresh, crisp style with creamy texture but balanced by bright acidity, a medium to full body and a long finish. So, if big buttery Chardonnays are your thing, this wine will meet your hopes in a textural fashion. Which is another way of saying, try this great white made in a fresh style.

It's made from grapes grown on Te Muna Road, Martinborough, which were planted in 1999. The wine goes through malolactic fermentation with lees stirring to enhance texture and it aged for 11 months in French oak, 20% of it new.

Kumeu River Wines and the owners, the Brajkovich family, are icons of the New Zealand wine industry. This Chardonnay consistently over delivers for its modest price tag and is a dry, medium bodied wine with nutty, fresh, savoury elements derived from fermentation in old French oak barriques for 80% of the wine with the balancing 20% in stainless steel to preserve freshness. 

This wine is great drinking now as a fab go-to wine, any time.

Kumeu River Wines began life as San Marino Wines in 1944 when Croatian immigrant couple, Mick and Katé Brajkovich, bought a small property with a vineyard on it. Their descendents now own and run Kumeu River Wines, which produces 250,000 bottles of wine annually from its owns 30 hectares of vineyards in Kumeu and from another 10 hectares, owned by local grape growers. 

Te Kahu means the cloak in Maori and refers to the mist that shrouds the Craggy Range Giant's Winery in the Tukituki Valley in early morning . This bold but balanced red blend highlights five classic grapes from Bordeaux in south west France; Merlot leads the way in this sharply priced red with proportions of the other grapes varying each year. These include Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot. 

We love this red from Craggy, which we think offers an outstanding wine in terms of being exceptional value for money which drinks well now and can age positively into the future too. 

Gamey, savoury, deliciously refreshing Pinot Noir from Martinborough's next new big thing - Te Muna Valley, a dramatically majestic sub region for grapes that is situated 9 kilometres east of Martinborough village. 

Big Sky Wines is on the high alluvial terraces of Martinborough's Huangarua River at Te Muna, 9 kilometres east of the village. Low yielding deep gravels, hot days and cool nights result in wines that are deep and complex. This is their flagship wine from a low vigour, low cropping vineyard.  Hand picked, crushed into two tonne open fermenters with 10% whole bunch fermentation and minimal crushing and with wild fermentation followed by 12 months in French oak, 12.5% of which was new. And therein lies the beauty of this insanely delicious Pinot Noir with its ripe berry fruit flavours of dark cherries and plums, balanced by mouth filling savouriness, warm spice, and silky tannins. 

The Big Sky story

Jeremy Corban and Katherine Jacobs founded Big Sky Wines in the Te Muna Valley, Martinborough, in 2005. They have since expanded their small vineyard, which is predominantly planted in Pinot Noir and also has a little Sauvignon Blanc, which they give extra textural complexity to with a little time in old oak on lees. 

This stunning South Island Sauvignon Semillon blend is a maverick New Zealand take on the classic white Bordeaux blend, offering fresh, bright and delicious aromas of ripe apple, lime, gooseberry and passionfruit. The Sauvignon (70%) brings fruit flavours and excellent acidity while the Semillon (30%) brings fruit weight, richness and age ability, due to its pronounced acidity. 

Both varieties were aged on their natural deposits of yeast lees for approximately 10 months, prior to blending. This lees contact brings creaminess and body. Once bottled, the wine was left to age for another year before release, allowing the varietal characters to integrate further.

This wine drinks deliciously well now, preferably served in a large glass, but it has a long history of great age ability too and is a good wine for the cellar.

Celebre is a quirky Rhone-meets-Bordeaux blend of Merlot, Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec and Cabernet Franc. Exact proportions of each grape vary from one vintage to the next but the wine always has dark fruit aromas and spicy notes of cocoa, cardamom and nutmeg. It drinks well when young and also has the long term potential to age beautifully in a wine cellar. 

It is dry, full bodied and evolves nicely for up to a decade.

The name Ata Rangi is Maori for dawn sky and was chosen to portray the new beginning that the start of this winery represented for founder Clive Paton in the late 1970s.  

The Shotfire Quartage is sourced from the older Thorn-Clarke owned plantings in the Barossa, with 'Kabininge' and 'St Kitts' vineyards being the main contributors.

 This wine is primarily a blend of traditional Bordeaux varietals (Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Malbec) with Cabernet Sauvignon always being dominant. Whilst the Barossa is famous for Shiraz, Thorn-Clarke is renowned for its Quartage which has collected Trophies for best wine of show and / or class at most major wine shows in Australia over the last 10 years.

VINEYARD - The fruit from this wine was sourced from a single Waipara Valley vineyard.  The fruit is left on the vine to ripen until the berries start to lose moisture and shrivel, concentrating the flavours and producing a rich style of Pinot Gris. 

SOIL TYPE - Alluvial gravels

WINEMAKING - The fruit was hand-picked and meticulously hand sorted. The juice was fermented warm by indigenous yeasts in aged French oak barriques.

TASTING NOTES - Wonderfully fruited and fragrant, the bouquet shows mango, golden peach, poached pear and rich floral aromas, leading to a splendidly flavoursome palate offering opulent fruit flavours with spicy nuances, finishing long and delicious. Gorgeously styled with rich tones of ripe fruit intensity backed by juicy acidity. Sam Kim - Wine Orbit.

A real little peach brandy made using the best peach in Kecskemét. High purity, pleasantly fruity, noble drink. A pálinka made from the distillation of the juicy fruit of a selected, mature, juicy fruit, which has a pungent flavor in the smell and the taste of the mature peach's aroma.

This Black Estate Home Pinot Noir was grown on the Home Vineyard located in North Canterbury on a north facing sedimentary clay fan on a gentle hill side slope.

Deep ruby in the glass with perfumed, alluring open and fresh berry fruits, earth, custard and sandalwood on the nose. Supple sensual fruit on the palate with supporting tannin. offering a soft, structural, crisp and mineral experience. 

Churchill Grafite is a great red from a great Portuguese wine producer. It's a blend of Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca and Tinta Roriz (the Portuguese name for Tempranillo), which combine to make a dry, deeply coloured and full bodied wine. Spicy notes add complexity to the layers of ripe blackberry, dark plum and cedar aromas in this fab red wine. Bring on the cold nights. This wine is ideal for them. 

94% Nerello Mascalese with 6% Nerello Cappucio. This is a bright red wine with an expressive nose and a fresh palate. The nose offers notes of fresh cherries and prunes with subtle touches of leather and tobacco. The palate is complex, with soft tannins, good structure and great fruit expression.