Pask Declaration Chardonnay is a rich and complex wine of depth, structure and elegance. The palate offers typical stone-fruit and ripe fruit characters; lees aged complexity and new oak notes. This is a beautiful Chardonnay with excellent aging ability.

Luta 2021 Chardonnay from Echo vineyard in Weka Road, made from Clones 15, 95 & Mendoza grown in Moutere Clay soils.

The Grapes were whole bunch pressed & aged in 500L 5-7 year old oak puncheons on the lees for 10 months.

Lemon rind, Brioche & Yoghurt on the nose.

Lemon rind fruit up front into brioche & Oats on the midpalate then a delicate minerality into the finish.

A very elegant wine with great texture.

A floral Chardonnay that displays lanolin, flintiness and stone fruit aromas on the nose. The palate is creamily textured and full bodied with ripe nectarine-like fruit, underlying notes of toasted cashew nuts, sourdough bread and cinnamon quills - ending with a clean and crisp finish and a lovely persistent and savoury toastiness.

One of Central Otago's best kept secrets - great whites made from Chardonnay, a grape that thrives in the deep south as this beauty shows. It's full bodied, dry and made from certified organic grapes grown at the Morrison Vineyard at Pisa; one of the most highly regarded sub regions for grape growing in Central Otago. 

Grapes were pressed straight to barrel for fermentation with native vineyard yeasts, entirely in older French oak with no new oak at all. The wine was then matured in the same barrels for a year. 

The result is a beautiful dry, richly textured, smooth and creamy Chardonnay balanced by great southern acidity which gives Central Otago a distinctive edge when producing the world's most popular white wine. 

The home and winery of Mount Edward is situated in Gibbston, 25 kilometres from Queenstown.  Vineyards are there, in Bannockburn and at PIsa. 

Winemaker Kevin Judd makes one of Marlborough's best Chardonnays every year and this one is full bodied with intense ripe flavours of grapefruit, burnt orange and white nectarine, which mingle with savoury aromas of smoked almonds, hazelnut meringue and the heady fragrance of freshly cut hay. The mealy savouriness carries through onto a rich, textural palate, evidence of this wine?s low-intervention winemaking. An intricate bone-dry style that is highly concentrated with a distinct flintiness, tight structure and crisp citrussy finish.

South Island Chardonnay is on a roll as this tasty drop from Mt Maude in Central Otago shows. Winemakers Sarah Kate and Dan Dineen use hand picked grapes from 27 years old vines to make this dry full bodied, creamy smooth wine. 

The grapes are foot stomped, basket pressed, fermented with indigenous yeasts, and the wine is aged in seasoned French oak to produce what they describe as a seamless wine. We agree. 

Try it. 

Here's a Chardonnay with the Midas touch; it's big, it's smooth and it's creamy as anything with all the bells and delicious whistles that Chardonnay lovers enjoy. It's  made with grapes grown on the Howell's Vineyard in Hawke's Bay, a site that seems to provide the magic ingredients of deliciousness in a wide range of varietals grown on it. 

Coddington Chardonnay is made with grapes grown on a West Auckland vineyard owned by Tim and Angela Coddington, who have provided grapes to Kumeu River Wines since 1998; originally used in the Estate Chardonnay.

The grapes from this vineyard has since proven to have such rich, distinctive flavours that the Brajkovich family decided to create a single vineyard Chardonnay, initally in 2006. 

Kumeu River Coddington Chardonnay is ripe, peachy and rich with supple approachability, density, concentration and luscious creaminess. This makes the wine easy to drink at an early stage and it will age well too.

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. 

PURE, FRESH & TEXTURAL BARREL AGED CHARDONNAY

Bright, light yellow/green, it is mouth filling and vibrant with hints of stonefruit and citrus. Creamy and textural with a refreshing dry mineral finish. Approachable and delicious.

Vintage
2023 was a challenging vintage for Hawke’s Bay. Intensive viticulture work was imperative throughout the growing season.  High rainfall, humidity, reduced sunshine hours and Cyclone Gabrielle hitting the region early February was the icing on the cake.  A silver lining was the harvest was weeks behind a normal growing season which mean’t very slow ripening and high acids so grape maturity levels were behind when the cyclone hit. As the season unfolded and settled into autumn it was a very late pick for a lot of the varieties, in some respects a saving grace.

Vineyards
Kokako, Ohiti Valley and Ascot, Havelock North

Winemaking
90% Kokako Vineyard, Ohiti Valley 10%  Ascot Vineyard, Havelock North.  No SO2. Pressed to tank for cold settling overnight. Racked clean to barrel. Natural fermentation and malo-lactic fermentation to completion. Aged in matured French oak barrels on lees for 9 months.  Final Blend, barrel selection to taste.

pH 3.56 TA 7.0 g/L Alc 13.0 %v/v

100% hand-picked Chardonnay, crushed and pressed into old Burgundian French oak barrels for wild yeast fermentation until dry. The wine was matured in barrel for 14-16 months during which time it underwent full malolactic fermentation.

This is a complex Chardonnay with multiple layers of ripe fruit and richness, along with a chalky minerality on the nose. The palate combines fruit weight and balanced acidity with a tight yet generous structure. This is followed by a long lingering pithy citrus finish with and hints of savouriness.

Mount Beautiful by name and by nature, this full bodied, peachy South Island Chardonnay is beautifully balanced by freshness and acidity of flavours of red apple, stone fruits and nectarines, leading to a creamy, textured palate that is medium bodied. Flavours include layers of buttered brioche and the wine finishes clean and crisp with flint-like minerality.

Our Iris Chardonnay comes from the gracious slopes of our Čuvar Terraces Vineyard in Bayview. First planted by George Fistonich in 1986 (he was yet to become Sir), this vineyard has one of the best views in the bay - looking out to the Pacific Ocean. This environment shapes the sunshine of this wine.

The forthright bouquet introduces bursts of candied tropical fruits intertwined with notes reminiscent of warm fruit crumble. Gentle oak wraps around the palate of balanced acid and ripe fruit. Nothing is too dominant — the fruit, oak, acid and flavours all sing in harmony

Whitehaven Wines began life in 1994 as a romantic business for a couple of corporate escapees, Sue and Greg White, who had given up life in the rat race of Auckland for another kind of life aboard their yacht. When sailing around the country, they took shelter in the Marlborough Sounds from Pacific storms and fell in love with the region. An easy thing to do when harbouring in the spectacularly pristine waters of the Sounds. They decided to settle there on terra firma once more and try their hands at wine production, hiring a winemaker and beginning a business which has now been around for 26 years. Greg has sadly passed away now, leaving a legacy as well as his wife and daughter, Sam, to run the winery. Their winemaker is Peter Jackson.

Mission Estate Jewelstone Chardonnay is a pale straw coloured wine with complex aromatics of sweet stone fruit, marzipan and struck flint notes. The palate is full and fruit forward with a fine structure and a long clean finish.

The most flavoursome Chardonnay barrels are selected after a year of aging and then blended together to make this pinnacle of Seresin's dry, full bodied white wines, the Reserve Chardonnay. The reserve wine spends another six months in old oak puncheons, gaining depth, complexity and integration of flavour thanks to this additional maturation. 

Organic certification

The organic story at Seresin

One of the greatest things about Seresin Estate is the organic certification. This came relatively early on for Seresin, who was dismayed by the amount used and the impacts of man made chemicals, which were routinely and frequently sprayed on vines. His early adopting philosophy of organic certification paved a positive path for the integrity of the wines as well as leading others to follow suit.