The Chenin Blanc is textural and mouth filling, with tropical fruit notes, crisp granny smith apple acidity and a saline finish. Ideal with white fish, oysters, mussels and goat’s cheese. The grapes are attentively grown at the exceptional Two Terraces vineyard (Mangatahi Terraces region) by Ian & Linda Quinn and were in their third year of conversion to organic Bio Gro certification at the time of picking.

The grapes were foot crushed in picking bins and left to soak overnight to extract phenolic texture before being whole bunch pressed into old barrels. I made a vineyard starter (pied de cuve) with Chenin grapes that fermented naturally in the vineyard under the vines. I then inoculated the barrels with this natural starter ensuring a healthy vineyard yeast strong ferment. The wine is unfined and unfiltered and no additives were used at any time.