Our Wines

Chardonnay 2008

Served in Air New Zealand Business Class

 “a high-flavoured style, [..] with excellent weight, complexity and richness.”  -  Michael Cooper, Buyer's Guide to New Zealand Wines 2011

Description

This medium lemon yellow Chardonnay has a beautifully smooth, full-bodied texture. It opens with grapefruit on the nose, followed by hints of spicy oak and slight buttery notes. The citrus and butter characters continue on the palate, followed with subtle spice and fine acidity. The flavours should develop and integrate even further with careful cellaring up to five years.

Viticulture

Fruit for this Chardonnay comes from a single block on the western corner of our vineyard. The 2/23 clone we have is a reselection of the venerable Mendoza clone which does not suffer from the often poor berry set of its predecessor. The vines were trained into vertically shoot positioned canopies and were severely fruit thinned and allowed to keep full canopies to increase fruit shading. This allowed the fruit to reach maximum ripeness while maintaining a taut acid structure.

The 2008 vintage was one of the shortest in Marlborough’s history. The weather leading up to vintage caused all varieties to reach ripeness at about the same time. Fortunately, the reduced cropping methods we use at our Bouldevines vineyard meant that our grapes were safely in the winery very early, before the weather difficulties that plagued the end of the Marlborough season.

Vinification

The fruit was destemmed, gently pressed and cold settled. The resulting clear juice was then brought to down to a suitably cool temperature and inoculated with yeast. Once the juice has begun to ferment, approximately half was drained to barrel and fermented in barrel, with the balance being left to ferment in tank. The wine was then inoculated a second time for malolactic fermentation and allowed to partially finish, thus gaining the typical characters of malolactic fermentation, but still maintaining some of its crisp acidity. The wine was left to mature in French oak for 10 months before it was minimally filtered and bottled.

Brix at harvest: 24.5°
Total Acidity: 5.6 g/l
Residual Sugar: 0.5 g/l
Alcohol: 14.5%
PH: 3.49

> Bouldevines Marlborough Chardonnay 2008 Tasting Note (PDF)

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