2022 - Hunting Hill Chardonnay, Kumeu River, Kumeu

The 2022 Chardonnay Hunting Hill is an impressive, focused style. It has a sense of energy, being almost buoyant with the movement of a skimming stone across your palate. There's a powerful core of fruit here and it has plenty of substance within its no-more-than medium-bodied core before kerpow! It fires home with an almost spicy kick. Clever oak use, reminiscent of toasted nuts, meets restrained flavors of lemon and lime bitter and nectarine fruit. A wine that's still in its cocoon so give it time. It may even have the edge of Maté's... Big call.

The 2022 Hunting Hill Chardonnay is mouthfilling and obvious in its outlay of flavor in the mouth—yellow peach, apricot, Golden Delicious apple, beeswax/lanolin and ripe lime flesh. The flutter of acidity that feathers the fruit is compelling and alluring in its power and juiciness. An exciting wine. It's a wine I want to drink (I will; the perks) and a wine I am enjoying considering too. It's intellectual and sensorial/corporeal in equal measure. The Hunting Hill Vineyard was planted in 1982 and overlooks Mate's Vineyard. This is a pleasurable, exciting, fleshy, complex, salty, kaleidoscopic wine. Excellent. Recommended. 13.5% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.

25% new oak. Lemon drops are found in grapes tasted by Michael Brajkovich apparently and also in the wine. The price is edging closer to Maté’s.Tense and racy and tight – sort of Chassagne/St-Aubin border?! More obvious acid and tension than in the other Kumeu River Chardonnays. You could definitely enjoy it already if you liked a leaner style but it would benefit from further ageing ideally. (JR)