Community Tasting Note

• HowardNZ Likes this wine: 90 points

  April 8, 2015 - Dinner with Nick and Wayne: There is a lot of hype around this vintage of this Chardonnay so it was good to try it alongside the Bell Hill and a top quality Côte de Beaune 1er. The wine's nose is 'soft', with pineapple, passionfruit and other aromas of tropical and orchard fruit. On palate, the impression is similar. This Chardonnay has dense fruit weight and is relatively rounded with its flavours mainly in the tropical fruit spectrum. However, in addition to serious structure, this wine does have sufficient definition and acids to prevent it from being blowsy. Also, the oak is relatively well integrated and in proportion to the fruit. The wine has good length. I'd give it 2-3 years for optimal drinking. From vines planted on the hillside Naboth's Vineyard in 1981, only produced in exceptional years.

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3 Comments

• Callum's Corkers commented:

  5/15/15, 1:17 AM - Hi. Sound review. Pleasure to read. Comprehensive. How did the (notoriously expensive) Bell Hill compare? Same vintage, 2013? And the white Burgundy (again, probably expensive)?
  2013 in NZ.....because of the gushing PR press releases I can't help being sceptical. But, I have to say, the North Island whites have been v good, at least so far. Dunno, though, about the cellar potential for some of these whites from 2013, from such a 'ripe' year. I have bought some of the reds, but obviously ain't touched them yet. I haven't even seen many of the '13 reds at the annual NZ tasting in London. Next year, no doubt.
  Vintage Reports are important, I think. 'Reports' better than quick-ref Chardts. Probably best detailed Vintage Report on net I have found is Wine Spectator's annual Vintage Report. It is still free access, for now. They do all of Europe plus USA and all Sth Hemisphere regions in SA, NZ and Oz and Chile etc. It is annoying when I look at Parker's Vintage Chart, say, and he gives a score of, say, 90 for the vintage in NZ, but no details of how Otago would have almost certainly entirely diff' weather for the season than Martinborough, or even Canterbury. Yet they give a proper breakdown for France in one year, ie Loire from Burgundy etc etc.
  By the way, at last yr's annual Australia tasting in London my Wine of the Show was Lethbridge Pinot Noir. Stunning. From Victoria. You ever tried it? They have a couple of levels, even the lowest one is superb value-for-money, on the level of pretty good Burgundy for 50% of the money. (But, again, pick your vintages after researching growing season/harvest reports.

• HowardNZ commented:

  5/15/15, 1:51 AM - Hi Callum.
  
  If you click on 'Dinner with Nick and Wayne' you'll see my review of the 2011 Bell Hill which I much preferred. The 2011 is the current release (BH hold back their wines for a few years). Here the prices of the BHs is not so much the issue, it's the very limited availability (my annual allocation is 4 bottles and it's not sold in shops). Very quickly, BH has become one of my favourite NZ chardonnays (the 2009 was my top NZ in an international tasting). The Boillot was however a class above IMO.
  
  I see the NZ 2013 hype should be about just North Island reds (ie Hawkes Bay and Waiheke Is Syrah and Bordeaux blends and Martinborough Pinot Noirs). I don't really see it as a whites (Chardonnay) phenomenon so much. It's not a Central Otago phenomenon where two of the leading winemakers have told me they preferred their 2012s to their 2013s.
  
  So I agree you need to know your areas in NZ like everywhere ... NZ is not however unique in this. It frustrates me how Piedmont is lumped together when Barolos and Barbarescos may fare very differently in the same vintage (eg 2010).
  
  Victoria and Tasmania are producing some very good pinots. I have however not tried many as NZ is awash with servicable to excellent pinots at different price points, so no need to import Aussies!
  
  Best, Howard

• Callum's Corkers commented:

  5/16/15, 6:56 AM - Yip, I agree what you say about entire regions being given a Vintage Chart rating, yet within the regions are different grape varieties - with diff' ripening schedules. It can rain at the 'end' of a vintage, yet Cabernet or Riesling, say, still isn't picked. Vague ratings hide the truth.
  
  Agree, too, that Otago in 2013 wasn't as good as their 2012, though much of the remainder of NZ had a pretty ordinary/difficult season in 2012. Detail is important. I hang off buying wines from areas I know - from research - to have had a dodgy/difficult year, even from known/trusted producers. I simply look elsewhere, another country even, follow the good vintages, buy from good/great years. You can get bargains, too: buy an ordinary wine like Cote du Rhone, say, from a 'commercial' producer like Guigal in good/great yrs. It will be very good, yet cheap to buy. (Call me old fashioned, but I'm still excited by Value-For-Money.) They'd have to try very hard to muck it up. I leave off buying the same wine from a dodgy year, even from someone fantastically reliable/classy like Ch de Beaucastel: 'you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.' Even them.

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