150 Church Road,
Taradale,
Hawke's Bay
New Zealand
Ph: +64 6 844 2053
Fax: +64 6 844 3378
info@churchroad.co.nz
Terms of Use
Privacy Policy
Accessibilty Features
©2006
With the Church Road Cuve series, our winemakers extend our varietal and winemaking boundaries to craft exciting wines with unique characteristics. These experimental wines often lay the groundwork for stylistic shifts in our more mainstream wines. The range is named for the traditional large oak vats (cuves) that we first imported from France into New Zealand.
Latest vintages of Church Road Cuve series Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot are available at fine wine stores, with the others in the range available as limited release wines at our cellar door only.
Church Road Cuve Chardonnay is sourced from Mendoza clone fruit grown on a cool site close to the sea in the Tuki Tuki Valley. Hand-harvested and whole bunch pressed, we have fermented cloudy juice using wild primary and malolactic fermentation and subsequent lees stirring to produce a wine with real textural and aromatic interest, without having to rely heavily on new oak for complexity.
Vintages: 1994, 1995, 1998, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008
Being further inland than our other vineyards, the Matapiro Vineyard, from where fruit for this wine was sourced, avoids the moderating effects of the sea, and as such has a much higher diurnal shift in temperature, with warm days and very cool nights. These cool nights help delay ripening and allow us to achieve a level of aromatics in Pinot Gris that we do not see from lower altitude vineyards closer to the coast. With this wine we have aimed to explore a lush Alsace-style wine that relies on late harvesting to provide an aromatic, full-bodied white wine with medium sweetness.
A serious, multidimensional wine in a classic Bordeaux style. Over the last few years, we have sourced more and more fruit from the warm low vigour soils in the south western Heretaunga Plains, in particular in the Gimblett Gravels and The Triangle sub-regions of Hawke's Bay. The warm meso-climates and light, stony soils give low crops of concentrated, fully ripe, fragrant fruit that produces classically structured wines with power, elegance, fragrance and finesse.
Champion Merlot - 2008 Vintage - Royal Easter Show Wine Awards 2011
Merlot at its best should be a seductive wine, with rich, dark plummy fruit, fragrant floral notes and a rich, mouth-filling and supple palate - to which this wine delivers. Church Road Cuve Merlot is rich, ripe and serious with good palate weight and length. Harvested on the warm, stony soils around Gimblett Road, ripe fruit from an exceptional vintage was fermented in oak cuves and 70-year-old concrete fermenters prior to maturation in French Oak barriques for a further 22 months.
Possibly the only wine of this variety you will find in New Zealand.
Marzemino is rare even in its home country of Italy. Predominantly grown in the Trentino-Alto Adige region of north eastern Italy, the variety there produces deeply coloured, spicy wines.
Vintages: 2005
This Rhône-style Syrah was grown on the low-vigour red-metal soils of our Redstone vineyard in the Ngatarawa district. Ripe fruit was hand harvested and sorted before being crushed to one of our French oak cuves, where fermentation was completed. After three weeks on skins, the wine was drained off and filled to new and one-year-old French oak barriques for maturation. This medium-bodied wine is full of fragrant fruit and gamey complexity. On the nose, a core of dark berry fruit is overlaid with fragrant violet and spice characters, while savoury oak and gamey notes add complexity and richness. The palate is supple with soft, ripe tannin and good length of both texture and flavour.
Vintages: 2004
This is the first Viognier we have produced at Church Road, a grape variety originally from the Northern Rhône valley in France, where it produces the sought-after wines of Condrieu. True to style, this rich wine was hand harvested from our Ngatarawa vineyard and vinified using traditional winemaking techniques. It has aromas of spice, honeysuckle, pear and dried apricot, with subtle mealy, savoury complexity. This is a delicious full-bodied wine with great mid-palate concentration and length of flavour that echo the aromatics.
Malbec is typically used as a blending variety in Hawke’s Bay, bringing colour, fragrance and structure to Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon-based wines. In some parts of the world, most notably in Argentina and also in Cahors, France – it is bottled on its
own. In good vintages such as 2007, Hawke’s Bay Malbec can produce dense, fragrant red wines with an appealing rustic edge, typical of the variety. In such years we keep a small portion of our best Malbec separate under this label.
This stunning Sauvignon Blanc is a full bodied and textural wine with gentle
acidity and great length of ripe fruit flavour. The fruit flavours on the finish
match the aromas, with fresh clover honey, white-fleshed peaches, thyme and
ripe, pungent fruit persisting in the mouth. This is a wine for those who appreciate
complexity and texture
Vintages: 1998, 2004, 2005, 2009
Top of page