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Jeremy Matthew
Barrel Sampler
Posts:2067
 | | 12/20/2002 12:19 AM |
| Villa Maria is NZ's third largest winery group and the largest private owned Winery. They have produced more medal winers than any other winery in NZ and the umbrella of wineries that they are involved with and own include Esk Valley and Vidals. 2001 was the last year for wine maker Michelle Richardson MW whose shoes have been filled by Alastair Maling MW (ex Henschke). Michelle has taken a sabatical for a couple of years based on her achieving a gold medal (90+ points)in every category which she has now done. Alastair has some big shoes to fill.
Villa Maria owns vineayards across NZ including Marlborough, Gisborne, and Hawkes Bay. They have some vineyards planted in the northern Wairarapa but these are really limited to a couple of wines.
Michelles legacy is phenomenomal with over sixty gold medals spread across ten years with too numerous amount of silvers and bronze to even count, her abilites as a a wine maker are shown in all of her wines starting at the cheaper and accesiblly priced Private Bin Label. The Cellar Selection and Reserve series wines are awesome powerful wines with great structure. The only wine I have ever questioned that Villa has produced was there pinot noir but this year Michelle managed two golds with her Reserve Label Pinot Noir with fruit coming from the Marlborough Region.
Villa's three tiers of wine have slowly increased in price over the years but are still generally fairly affordably with only the top wines breaking the $50 NZD mark. (This is expensive for NZ wine in NZ).
The Private Bin East Coast Chardonnays are a blend of Gisborne and Hawkes Bay fruit made at the winery in Auckland. This wine pciked up gold in the recent Air NZ Wine and Spirit Show and is a prime example of Michelles devotion to affordable but very good wine. It retails here in my shop for $19NZD but I have seen it for as low as $15 NZD. It is also
one of the few Commercial level wineries I stock.
This should be available stateside.
Colour: deep straw
Nose: subtle hints of oak (charcoal) dominated by malo influenced mangos, melon and peach. Slight cheesy notes as well (mayhap lees contact), slight phenol notes as well. Mayhap some citrus zest also.
Palate: Oak domination fades into orangeflavoured zingy acids. The wines plays around on the palate leaving zinging acids and warmth , the length of the wine is quite impressive with excellent although slightly sharp finnish. Not unpleasant with the sharpenss it seems to intergrate the buttterscotch characters. Subtle lime hints are obvious on the palate. The texture of the wine isn't as intergrated due to the acids but this wine could do with another year or so.
Overall: A great little wine. An A on the QPR and a 90 points on the Jeremy Scale. Quite a complex chardonnay which relies more on complexity and intergration than big flavours.
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