I’ve been lucky to have tasted around a decade of Villa Maria ‘Single Vineyard – Keltern’ Hawke’s Bay Chardonnay vintages. The vineyard, situated on Maraekakaho Road near Hastings in Hawke’s Bay can be regarded as one of this country’s premier sites for Chardonnay. The wines from ‘Keltern’ exhibit a distinctive personality that the Villa Maria viticultural and winemaking teams recognise, and do as much (or as little) as required to expressed this character to the fullest. An inland site with the nearby Ngaruroro River bordering it, the vines, clones 15 and 95 at around 16 y.o. are planted on ancient riverbed with silt loam soils layered over red metals and includes large, free-draining gravel stones. The more recent planting of clone 548 Chardonnay has become significant.
For me, the Chardonnay wines from the ‘Keltern’ site have great elegance and proportion with an intensity and depth of favour that is not rivalled by the other Villa Maria estate Chardonnay sites in Hawke’s Bay. There is a degree of finesse and vitality to the wine that is a standout. This is a consistent feature. The wines show an array of stonefruit aromas and flavours, rather than tropical fruits, and usually the gunflint mineral complexity is present, the strength of which is vintage dependent. The multi-gold and multi-trophy winning 2010 wine was arguably one of the strongest in this complexing factor; I have enjoyed the wine very much, almost all the bottles quite wondrous, but the occasional bottle ‘over the top’ – but this is not due to any inconsistency in the wine, but rather, due to my mood, situation and food I was eating at the time!
Villa Maria’s current release of the ‘SV – Keltern’ Chardonnay is the 2017 vintage. The vintage was a cool and wet one, but the Villa Maria viticultural team picked the fruit before the significant March rain events. The vintage is a departure from earlier vintages in that for the first time, clone 548, the ‘Corton-Charlemagne’ clone is predominant, and that fruit from younger vines make up the larger proportion of the blend. The wine has already been successful on the show circuit with gold medals and a Champion Wine of the Show trophy. I review the wine here. www.villamaria.co.nz
