Kidnapper Cliffs Chardonnay 2014

NEW KID NAILS IT

First sole-charge winemaking gig, first vintage, first in the Cuisine chardonnay tasting. Not bad at all. Richard Painter has every right to look back on 2014 as one of those years. Painter moved in as Te Awa’s winemaker (he was previously the assistant at Vidal) just before the 2014 growing season began. What was a very good vintage, he says, became even better when he picked his chardonnay early in response to the perceived threat of Cyclone Lusi. “We had good ripeness, but there’s always the temptation to leave the fruit out a little longer. I think the wines would have been less elegant if we had done that. Lusi forced our hand. As it turned out, she never came anyway.” Kidnapper Cliffs is Te Awa’s top chardonnay, produced from prime parcels grown on the estate vineyard, and only made in the best vintages. The Te Awa site straddles the Gimblett Gravels and Bridge Pa Triangle sub-regions and Painter says his best chardonnay fruit comes off the siltier Bridge Pa soils. Hand-picked, whole-bunch-pressed and fermented wild, the wine was made with minimal intervention. Says Painter: “The beauty of this wine is that it’s only just been released. It has had a year in barrel and two years in bottle. It needed that time to really open up.”

• Chardonnay - White wine
• Hawke's Bay - New Zealand
• NZ $55
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• Cellar: 3 year(s)
top 10
• View the full NZ Chardonnay 2017 tasting results