Kumeu River Wines Single Vineyard Selection Hunting Hill Chardonnay 2025

Description

The 2024 Hunting Hill Chardonnay is the ripest in alcohol of the 2024 releases, and it feels powerfully layered and driven on the palate. This is rich, almost thunderous in its positioning, with salted citrus and exotic spices (star anise/fennel/scraped vanilla pod). The oak here is polished and elegant, smoothing down any stray, loose hairs. The barrels have been air dried for three years and lightly toasted. The finish is tight and focused. This was tasted as a tank sample prior to filtration and bottling. Wine Advocate 93-95

At Kumeu River Wines our winemaking philosophy is simple. We endeavour to grow grapes of the highest standard and then treat them with respect when we turn them into wine. In this way the potential quality is maximised, and we are able to produce wines that are truly representative of our land. To this end our vineyards are trained on the “Lyre” trellis to optimise their exposure to light and therefore the ripeness of the grapes. Yields are kept low to improve the concentration of aromas and flavours in the grapes, and we harvest all of our grapes by hand. This allows us to remove faulty berries in the field so that our quality grapes may arrive at the winery in pristine condition. The white grapes are all whole-bunch pressed, which is time-consuming but gives us the best quality results. The reds are destemmed and crushed gently before being transferred to fermentation tanks. No yeasts are added, as we rely solely on the indigenous yeasts that are present in the vineyard to conduct our fermentations.