Harvested in the cool of the morning, the fruit for this wine reached superb ripeness after another warm summer in Gisborne. A portion of the grapes were hand harvested and some machine harvested. With the machine harvested grapes, the juice was cool fermented in tanks till dry and then underwent full malolactic fermentation and spent 4 months on lees. The hand-picked fruit was gently pressed and fermented in a combination of American and European barrels. The barrels selected here are from the parcels we don’t deem quite good enough to make our Irwin "flagship" Chardonnay but are still of exceptional quality to even be considered! The wine also undergoes full malolactic fermentation. The tank portion also spends time on lees in the barrels before the final blending. The wine is then stabilized, filtered and bottled
