Produced since 1984, Elston Chardonnay is grown at Te Mata Estate’s oldest vineyards on the hillsides above the winery. 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.

The superb quality of the 2021 vintage was immediately apparent in the fully ripe grapes that were hand-harvested from their separate, individual plots within Te Mata Estate’s Havelock Hills vineyards between February 15-27, 2021.

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, with a number going through malolactic fermentation. The finest lots were selected for further maturation, spending a total of 11 months in barrel.

Brilliant white gold in the glass, Elston Chardonnay ’21 has wonderfully intense aromas of golden peach, apricot, and lemon zest.
Focused but flowing – this is a wine of precision, power, and poise. On the mouth-watering palate there’s oodles of ripe, white-fleshed fruit, nougat and nutmeg, integrated fine oak tannin, and just a flick of salinity. A long line of sweet citrus acidity and ripe Hawke’s Bay chardonnay fruit run through here.