Produced since 1984, Elston is an outstanding New Zealand Chardonnay, grown at Te Mata estate’s oldest vineyards on the hillsides above the winery. It is rich and complex with flavours of fresh pineapple, white peach and nougat.

ORIGIN Elston is named for Elston Hall in Nottinghamshire, the ancestral home of Charles Darwin’s family. Darwin’s ‘theory of natural selection’ forms the basis of modern evolutionary theory, the foundation of biology. The wyvern symbol of Elston Hall appears on the label.

VINEYARDS The superb quality of the 2017 vintage was immediately apparent in the fully ripe grapes that were hand-harvested from their separate, individual plots within Te Mata Estate’s vineyards between 16 and 22 March 2017.

WINEMAKING Each parcel was gently whole-cluster pressed, cold settled and racked to new and seasoned French oak barrels for fermentation. The resulting wines remained in contact with their yeast lees while undergoing malolactic fermentation. The finest lots were selected for further maturation, spending a total of 11 months in barrel.

TASTING NOTE Elston Chardonnay ’17 is a fine, pale gold with notes of beeswax, white flowers, ripe peaches and flinty, wet, stone that flow through onto the palate. Roast almonds, hazelnuts, clover honey and warm brioche, along with this wine’s signature tight acidity, give the Elston Chardonnay ’17 incredible length, detail and finesse.

CLOSURE / CELLARING Elston ’17 is bottled with leading technology ‘DIAM’ corks. These are produced using a liquid form of carbon dioxide which eliminates any possibility of cork taint and, when the wine is well cellared, they provide consistent evolution for every bottle. Elston ’17 will continue to evolve in bottle for five years from harvest.