The 2024 Chardonnays from Kumeu River are now available to buy. In a small but high quality vintage, the Brajkovich family have delivered a set of superb wines in which the single vineyards shine through with more personality than ever before.
As a growing season 2024 was perfect for producing a quality harvest built on brightness and piercing fruit. The season was warm and dry, though temperatures never exceeded 29 degrees celsius, allowing for a slow development of flavour and retention of brighter aromatics. Yields, however, are down 30% in Auckland and 50% at Rays Road. This is due to a short cold spell at flowering that significantly reduced the potential yield of the vines early on.
The resulting wines are chiselled, fragrant and beautifully balanced, all the things we have come to love about this address. The Estate offers terrific value as ever and will benefit from a year or two in bottle; it makes sense to put this away and drink the more forward 2023 first. Erin Larkin, writing for the Wine Advocate, describes it as "utterly composed and restrained (...) mineral and very good indeed". Rays Road is the best yet, still with its Chablisienne style but more and more in line with the other single vineyard Chardonnays. "A lovely wine", writes Larkin.
The three single vineyard wines from Auckland are a triumph. Coddington goes from strength to strength; increasingly deep and long, still with its powerful and ripe fruit core. It receives an excellent 94-96 from Larkin: "this is very exciting". Hunting Hill delivers as usual: a tightly coiled, powerful but mineral wine with racy acidity and such impressive length. It will reward patience; our Master of Wine Thomas Parker writes: "a very impressive, pithy, long Hunting Hill that really speaks to the style this vineyard's reputation is built on." Maté's Vineyard might be the pick of the bunch. Planted in 1990, the now old vines produce a wine that brings the richness of Coddington and the tension of Hunting Hill in one. 95-97 from Larkin, who writes "perhaps as statuesque and thrilling as the best of the Maté's so far, with intensity that explodes in every direction on the palate".
This is another stellar range from Kumeu River, with prices that make a mockery of most similar quality white Burgundy. We can offer all the wines in bottles, and are exclusively able to offer halves for the UK market. The wines will be available for delivery in mid-November. |
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