Neudorf Moutere Rosie’s Block Chardonnay 2023
£30.75
The wine
Guava, gun flint and lime blossom are elegantly framed by restrained use of oak. There is wonderful weight to the palate, a voluptuous wine with marvellous shape and brilliant focus. Long, intricate and sophisticated, yet alluring with it.
Rosie's Block is one of the named Moutere parcels, on the ancient gravelly clay laid down by a long-vanished river system. Clay holds water through dry summers and restrains vigour, so vines ripen slowly and evenly. Named for Rosie Finn, the second generation, who now runs the estate.
The producer
Neudorf
View all Neudorf winesTim and Judy Finn planted Neudorf in 1978, when Nelson had no wine industry to speak of, and they were among the pioneers who established that it could have one. Tim was a founding member of Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand. Their daughter Rosie now runs the estate with winemaker Todd Stevens.
The asset is the Moutere clay. Nelson sits at the top of the South Island, sunnier than most of New Zealand but cooled by the sea, and the Moutere hills are formed of ancient gravelly clay laid down by a long-vanished river system. Clay holds water through dry summers and restrains vigour, and vines rooted in it ripen slowly and evenly. The Home Block Chardonnay from those soils is widely held to be among the finest made in the country.
The range is tiered by site: Tiritiri for the wider Nelson wines, then the named Moutere blocks, Rosie's Block and Home Block and Tom's Block, each bottled separately. An amphora-fermented Chardonnay sits alongside them, which is an unusual thing to attempt at this level and works.
