Kumeu River Hunting Hill Chardonnay 2025

Stone fruit
Butter
Oak

Everyday Low

Kumeu River Hunting Hill Chardonnay 2025

Name: Kumeu River Hunting Hill Chardonnay 2025
SKU: 114761
Price: 99.99 NZD
Availability: InStock

Wine

$99.99each

What it tastes like

Kumeu River Hunting Hill Chardonnay from the 2025 vintage.

Stone fruit
Butter
Oak

Additional information

Wine
Style

The story of Kumeu River Hunting Hill Chardonnay 2025

Hunting Hill takes its name from the hillside behind the Kumeu River winery in West Auckland, where Maté Brajkovich used to hunt rabbits and pheasants for the family kitchen. The vineyard was first planted in 1982, replanted around the start of the 2000s, and now sits on the slope above Maté's Vineyard as one of four single-vineyard Chardonnays the family makes.

The soil is heavy clay over sandstone, with an iron pan about twelve inches down that gives the wine its mineral grip. Fruit is hand-picked and whole-bunch pressed, then fermented with wild yeast in French oak, a quarter of it new. It stays in barrel on its lees for eleven months and goes through full malolactic fermentation.

The 2025 season was exceptionally dry in Kumeu. The early sparkling varieties came in from 4 February, about 17 millimetres of rain fell just before the table wine pick, and the weather then held until vintage finished on 17 March. The wine shows white nectarine, oatmeal and a trace of aniseed, with peach and ripe lime on a juicy, glossy palate and a long, chalky finish.

Pour it lightly chilled with roast chicken and its pan juices, pan-fried snapper or a creamy mushroom pasta.