Some of the oldest Chardonnay vines in the South Island grow at Neudorf's Home Block, planted in 1978 when Tim and Judy Finn first set up the Upper Moutere property. They face north on Moutere clay gravels, with a clay loam topsoil carrying small pebbles, and the clone is Mendoza. The vines are certified organic and dry farmed, cropped low and picked by hand.
Tim Finn chose clay soils on purpose, and it is why the estate can farm without irrigation. The Home Block wine is the structured one in the Neudorf range, where its sibling from Rosie's Block leans more elegant.
In the winery Todd Stevens does as little as he can. Whole bunches are pressed, the juice ferments wild in barrel, and only a small share of the French oak is new. The wine then spends around sixteen months on lees, with malolactic fermentation left to start in spring, and goes to bottle unfined. The nose is moss, stone and clay with toast and raw cashew, and the palate is long and slow to open. Neudorf suggests decanting it, and serving it with oysters, garlic scampi or barbecued crayfish tails.
Citrus
Stone fruit
Butter
Oak
