150 Church Road,
Taradale,
Hawke's Bay
New Zealand
Ph: +64 6 844 2053
Fax: +64 6 844 3378
info@churchroad.co.nz
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©2006
Our award-winning Church Road Reserve wines are produced only in outstanding vintages. These premium wines are made from carefully selected grapes and crafted using traditional Bordeaux winemaking techniques.
This Reserve Chardonnay comes from our very best Chardonnay blocks with the fruit hand-harvested and sorted off the vine, then whole-bunch pressed straight to our best French oak barrels where wild fermentation is allowed to proceed naturally. A core of ripe peach, grapefruit, fig and hazelnut is overlaid with a mealy complexity from yeast lees contact and savoury, integrated oak. The palate is rich and full, but with a seam of minerality that adds length and balance.
Vintages: 1991-1996, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009
This serious Sauvignon Blanc is quite unlike most others made in New Zealand and has more in common with the complex, textural white wines of Bordeaux. Hand harvested and whole bunch pressed, the fruit was a selection of the very best available from the vintage. Barrel fermented in French oak (30% new) using only indigenous yeasts and subsequent barrel age on full yeast lees for 9 months, has created a superbly aromatic, complex and textural wine that is ideally suited to enjoy with food.
Vintages: 2010
Deep, rich red in colour, this is a supple, medium to full-bodied red wine full of fragrant fruit. On the nose, a core of dark berry fruit is overlaid with fragrant violet and spice characters, whilst subtle, savoury oak adds complexity and a chocolate richness. The palate is full and supple with soft, ripe tannins and good length of both texture
and flavour.
- The 2007 vintage was awarded the Air New Zealand Champion Wine of the Show trophy and Champion Syrah trophy at the 2008 Air New Zealand Wine Awards.
This wine expresses our continuing evolution of the Bordeaux red wine style. The Bordeaux blend is one of the most challenging and exciting wine styles to produce. There is a synergy between Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot that when blended sensitively, produces arguably the most complete, complex, fragrant and satisfying style of red wine in the world. Over the last few years we have sourced more and more fruit from the warm, low-vigour soils of the south western Heretaunga Plains, in particular in the Gimblett Gravels and Red Metal 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.
Vintages: 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009
This sweet wine is a true French Sauternes-style Noble Sémillon with a distinctive New Zealand signature. Rich and intensely concentrated, it has been crafted from fully botrytised grapes from our Korokipo vineyard in Hawke's Bay. The key to this wine lies in the strict observance of traditional French Sauternes techniques, including individual berry selection and full barrel fermentation in new French oak.
Vintages: 1997, 1999, 2002, 2004
Condrieu, a small appellation in France's Northern Rhone Valley, is home
to the Viognier grape. We have looked to the benchmark wines of this region to
understand what makes Viognier so unique and distinctive. These wines are
quite unlike other white wines we are familiar with in New Zealand. With
their heady aromatics of apricot, orange blossom, exotic spice and honeysuckle
these fuller bodied white wines have a much lower acidity and higher pH
than most other varieties, lending themselves toward an almost oily, savoury
texture. Although an aromatic variety, it has a great affinity for many of
the techniques we use with Chardonnay including barrel fermentation, some
new oak, malolactic fermentation and lees maturation. If handled sensitively,
these techniques aide texture and add depth of flavour without dominating the
heady fruit flavours of the grape.”
Viognier is a fairly new variety for Hawke’s Bay and we have been progressively
learning more about this exiting, new, full-bodied, aromatic white grape since our first harvest in 2004. Whilst we had been targeting a dry style, we noticed that the variety had a good propensity to develop ‘noble rot’ late in the season, once the fruit was very ripe. The term noble rot describes fruit that has been infected by botrytis, causing it to shrivel up, concentrating the sugars and flavours in the grape. The typical strong apricot, citrus and floral aromas of the variety are present, along with honeyed and slightly nutty notes that come from the botrytis itself.
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