2024 SV Gewürztraminer

Te Whare Ra has a long-standing reputation for producing one of New Zealand’s finest Gewürztraminers and much of the credit must go to the vineyard here. This wine is produced solely from 14 rows in the old block which were planted in 1979 and are some of the oldest vines in Marlborough at 45 years of age. Part of the reason for our conversion to organic farming was to rescue these old vines and coax them back to life. We saw huge potential in this old block and successfully rejuvenating these vines has been one of our greatest achievements. They are very low cropping, which is not great for the accountant’s numbers, but is worth it for the amazing complexity and concentration we get from the fruit and the exceptional quality of the resultant wines.

Tasting Notes

Winemaking: All fruit for this wine was hand-picked and then hand-sorted.  The fruit was de-stemmed and gently crushed, then given some good skin contact time before being slowly and gently   air-bag pressed. The wine was fermented 100% in stainless steel.  The juice was fermented very slowly, at cool temperatures to retain aromatics.  All parcels spent time on lees, post ferment, for added texture and complexity. This wine has not been fined and is suitable for vegans and vegetarians and anyone else who loves authentic, hand-made wines.

Wine: Intensely perfumed, with notes of lychees, mango, ripe oranges and cloves. These lead into luscious varietal flavours of lychee and quince, with underlying characters of ginger and exotic spice.  The palate shows intense fruit concentration and weight with a fine, soft texture and excellent persistence of flavour. This wine is off dry and continues the outstanding quality of previous vintages of our Te Whare Ra Gewürztraminer.

Vintage 2024: This growing season for us this year was very different than that which the overall region experienced so that is important to note here. You will have no doubt seen all the media stories about the yields being significantly down in Marlborough due to frost and flowering impacts – but we had frost protection and due to our canopy management techniques, we did not experience the flowering issues that plagued others, so our yields were right on our LTA. We had very low rainfall over this growing season with the June to January period being the driest in 94 years! But yet again our continued focus on good organic matter levels (OM) in our soils over meant that we were not impacted by the drought and our vines sailed through with balanced set and very healthy canopies.

Harvest this year was very compact due to the dry season – with most of our crop off within the first 8 days. Our vintage team worked like a well-oiled machine to get it all in, so we are thrilled with both the quality and quantity this season. The resultant wines are very impressive with great depth of flavour and fleshiness whilst still exhibiting lovely purity of fruit.  This 2024 Gewürztraminer is delicious to drink now and will also really benefit from careful cellaring for 4 – 8 years for those who prefer it with some bottle age.

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