This wine is made exclusively with hand harvested fruit from the 18 year old vines on the Blackenbrook Home block where the vines grow on Moutere clay soil covered by a layer of sandy loam. The wine making is extremely gentle with whole bunch pressing, cool fermentation, minimal pumping over, extended lees contact and using gravity to move the wine when required.

8% of the wine is aged in oak to add mouthfeel and complexity and there is no fining pre-bottling.

 At 5.7g/l of residual sugar this is dry in style.

Tasting Notes
Our Blackenbrook Pinot Gris 2019 displays delightful pear, quince and spice notes framed by a silky texture, a splash of sweetness and gentle acidity. Ideal serving temperature 15 degrees.

Silver - New Zealand Wine of the Year Awards

4 1/2 Stars Michael Cooper

This powerful wine is still very youthful. It has strong peach, pear, lychee and spice flavours with a distinct touch of complexity, slight sweetness balanced by fresh acidity and a scented bouquet.

Corofin puts the b in boutique; it's a small scale production owned and run by Mike and Anna Paterson in Marlborough. The couple source grapes from top notch vineyards in the region, using organically certified vineyards wherever possible. Their Chardonnay is made from a blend of clones 6, 5 and Mendoza. Barrel fermentation adds creamy notes and nutty flavours to the citrusy aromas.

This red is predominantly a Merlot/Cabernet Sauvignon blend, with smaller proportions Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot to add further complexity and interest. Cherry/plum flavours and the suppleness of Merlot combine with the blackberry/blackcurrant flavours, structure, and freshness of Cabernet Sauvignon to produce a serious yet eminently drinkable wine. 

Each individual vineyard parcel was harvested separately and gently de-stemmed prior to fermentation. Gentle daily pumping over of the skins during fermentation helped extract a soft, complex structure. Extended maceration on skins following fermentation helped to further integrate and soften the tannins. Following aging in stainless steel tanks, and a short time in seasoned French oak, the individual blocks were blended to create the ideal wine. The Wine:

Black Estate - This Riesling is grown on the rolling slopes of our Damsteep Vineyard.  The site's dense clay and mineral limestone provide weight, texture and salivating freshness.  A true character.

VINEYARDS Parcels of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon were hand-picked from selected sites on the  gravel soils of the old Ngaruroro River, and old vine Merlot from the Bridge Pa region.  Bridge Pa Triangle soils feature fine silt loam over red metal gravels, while the gravel sites protected by Roys Hill, feature gravel over fine silt. These sites are free draining and low in fertility, resulting in struggling vines producing fruit of great concentration. Low yielding vines, open canopy management, managed irrigation and Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand farmed were common to all sites. Bridge Pa Merlot delivers ripe, dark plums which compliments the spicy brighter fruits from the gravels. Cabernet thrives on gravel sites and contributes structure, acidity and fragrant berry fruit notes. 

WINEMAKING Batches of hand harvested fruit was chilled overnight before processing the following day. Chilled bunches were hand sorted and de-stemmed, and whole berries were transferred to open fermenters with some foot stomping. Whole bunches were also incorporated in some of the Merlot fermenters. The berries were cold soaked before fermentation, with pumping over twice per day then pressed to barriques at the  end of fermentation. The Merlot and Cabernet matured for 21 months in new and  seasoned French oak barriques. Blended in December 2019 and bottled in January  2020, the final blend is approximately 70% Merlot and 30% Cabernet Sauvignon. 

SENSORY An elegant Merlot Cabernet blend which exhibits lifted aromatics of fragrant  berry fruits, sweet French oak, and underlying lavender and thyme. Complex and  textural, seamless tannins harmoniously support red and black fruits, earthiness,  and spice. Tautly poised to develop beautifully with bottle age.

Trademark wines are only made in a good vintage, with fairly small print runs.  They're drinkers and keepers.  Made from 100% Hawke's Bay gold.

Ripe fruit from three of our Trademark Syrah vineyards planted on limestone hillsides and an old riverbed. It shows admirable ripeness and depth of flavour, retaining vibrancy and great complexity on the nose and palate with typical violet, spice, black cherry and subtle white pepper notes. Supple chalky tannins provide a structure that promise time in bottle will be rewarded.

Exceptional North Canterbury Pinot Noir made in small volumes from the evocatively named isolated hill vineyard in Waiau. Spicy aromas and structured tannins lead into a full body wine made using indigenous yeast fermentation and spending 26 days on skins with ageing for 15 months in French oak.

This wine comes from winemaker Dom Maxwell, the talented winemaker at Greystone. Forager is his own personal winemaking project. 

This is an excellent value Wairarapa Pinot Noir. The grapes are carefully selected to create a great New Zealand Pinot with a medium body and a fruit forward and complex palate.  

Chardonnay with all the bells and fresh citrusy flavour notes adding depth and balance to the smooth creamy notes. Here's a wine that shows how exceptionally well Chardonnay grows in Marlborough. 

Beautiful complex pink wine with a little barrel fermentation adding depth and body to this wine. It's one of the best pinkies from the deep south and utterly delicious. 

This is drinking beautifully with silky mouthfeel and ripe red cherry fruit as well as dark plum flavours; a gorgeous wine with earthy depths of flavour. Stunning new release from the Huntress, winemaker Jannine Rickards, who uses 40% whole bunch ferment in her Pinot Noir - a winemaking method that enhances structure and adds grapevine tannin to wine rather than relying on oak for weight in the wine. This is the fourth vintage of Huntress Pinot and is made from On Giant's Shoulders Vineyard; it's a blend of four different clones of Pinot Noir;  10/5, Abel, 828 and clone 5.

Delicious, made in small volumes, get in quick. 

Delicious Riesling with gorgeously well balanced flavours of freshly picked crunchy green apples, lime zest and a ripe peachy note, all adding complexity to an incredibly beautiful expression of Riesling from this country's biggest wine region - Marlborough. 

This wine is made from a combination of hand and machine harvested fruit which was fermented at cool temperatures to retain fruit freshness as well as 11.6 grams per litre of residual sugar, nicely balanced by bright tasty acidity. It's a succulent little number which rocks a lime zest flavour and drinks beautifully now but can age for at least a decade. 

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.