Esk Valley: Crafting a winning chardonnay

The top wine in Dish's chardonnay tasting panel, Esk Valley's 2015 Winemakers Reserve Chardonnay is carefully crafted using traditional winemaking methods, local knowledge and Hawke's Bay grapes.

In the judging notes of our chardonnay tasting panel, the judges described Esk Valley's winning 2015 Winemakers Reserve Chardonnay as "a wave of peachy, buttered toast, cinnamon and roasted nutty niceness". 

The chardonnay has been carefully crafted by the passionate Gordon Russell, who aims to produce premium hand-crafted wines that are both elegant and sophisticated, and which truly reflect the character of the individual vineyards.

One of Esk Valley’s most revered collection of wines, fruit for the Winemakers Reserve is hand-picked, de-stemmed, then loaded into Esk Valley’s open-top concrete fermentation vats where it is hand-plunged and left in its skins, before being pressed off into barrels for malolactic fermentation.

Each vineyard parcel is fermented and aged separately before blending. Sixty to 70 per cent of the wine goes in to new French oak barriques, creating wines that are full-bodied and powerful, but elegant and food friendly too. 

If the comments from Dish's tasting panel judges are anything to go by, this care was incredibly worthwhile, with comments from the planel describing it from "very, very good", to being a glass of "extreme loveliness". One judge added that it complexity meant "every sip was something to think about".

Nestled in the Hawkes Bay region of Bay View, Esk Valley Estate is a boutique producer of premium quality New Zealand wine. For more information on their wines visit eskvalley.co.nz.