There have been a number of changes at Pask Winery in Hawke’s Bay over the past year. Owner John Benton has merged the Pask Winery with Jackson Estate in Marlborough which he also owns under the Benton Family Wine Group. Both operations come under the management of Jeff Hart. The very experienced Jeff Clarke oversees the winemaking of the group. Winemaker and shareholder Kate Radburnd left last year to pursue her own winemaking interests, and recently Julz Brodgen on the winemaking team departed to commit more to her own wine brand.
The winemaking and overall winery running at Pask is now headed by Paul Smith who first worked at Pask in 2004 before travelling overseas to return to the company full-time in 2010. Graham Bee, with Pask for 5 years tends to the company’s 52+ ha of vines in the Gimblett Gravels, planted mainly to the classical Merlot, Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay varieties.
Paul tells me that new plantings of Chardonnay are coming on stream, and he is particularly excited with the performance of clones 95 and 15 that will add to that of the existing Mendoza. With future plantings, clone 548 is high on the wish list. In winemaking, it is a continual evolution, and his aim, is to reduce the amount of new oak used in the wines, especially the flagship ‘Declaration’ wines. This is a fairly common theme heard throughout the industry as less intervention and more natural methodology grows in importance. Here, I review four wines, the 2016 Hawke’s Bay’ and‘Small Batch’ ‘Wild Ferment’ Chardonnays, the 2014 Hawke’s Bay Merlot, and the 2013 ‘Declaration’ Cabernet/Merlot/Malbec, the middle two I have reviewed earlier. www.pask.co.nz
