Cypress Terraces: A chardonnay with suave charm and flair

published 13 February 2015

2013 Cypress Terraces, Chardonnay, Hawke's Bay, New Zealand (from £20.49 to £21.99, Bordeaux Index, , 020-7269 0703; New Zealand Cellar, thenewzealandcellar.co.uk, 020-3662 7000; Wine Utopia, 01962-706666; Woodbridge Wine, , 01394-388446).

This was the most compelling white wine at the recent Annual New Zealand Wine Trade Tasting. After selling the renowned Hawke's Bay winery Te Awa, in 2002, Gus and Mel Lawson developed a small hillside farm up the road. The vines are now 14 years old and the wines are already staggeringly serious.

What I didn't know was that superstar winemaker Rod McDonald was making the wines there. Rod is phenomenally talented and I sensed some real flair and control in these wines, but I couldn't for the life of me think who could build this sort of complexity and suave charm in a Hawke's Bay chardonnay.

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The Terraces vineyard sits on top of Roy's Hill, overlooking the Gimblett Gravels sub-region and it is prime real estate. This wine is hand-picked, whole bunch pressed, 100% barrel fermented in French oak and then matured for ten months on its gross lees. This is benchmark winemaking.

The stock has just arrived in the UK and I cannot recommend it enough. After the damp squib of the 2013 Burgundy vintage, here is a stellar 2013 Chardonnay and it's only 20 quid!

Matthew Jukes is a winner of the International Wine & Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year (matthewjukes.com).

Matthew Jukes has worked in the UK wine business for well over three decades and during this time has written 14 wine books.

Matthew regularly lectures, judges, speaks at wine conferences and runs masterclass tastings for both corporate and private clients all over the world. Matthew is also the creator of his ground-breaking initiative, the One Day Wine School, an indulgent day of tasting and learning first performed in 2006.

He has been the MoneyWeek wine correspondent since 2006 and has written a weekly column for the Daily Mail’s Weekend Magazine since 1999. His four highly-acclaimed, annual wine reports – the Burgundy En Primeur Report, the Bordeaux En Primeur Report, the Piemonte Report and the 100 Best Australian Wines – are published on his website, www.matthewjukes.com.

Matthew is one of the world’s leading experts on Australian wine and, with Brisbane-based wine writer Tyson Stelzer, runs an annual competition in Australia to find ‘The Great Australian Red’. He was made Honorary Australian of the Year in the UK at the 2012 Australia Day Foundation Gala dinner.

Matthew is a winner of the International Wine and Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year Trophy. His thoughts, recommendations and tastings notes are followed very closely by the wine world at large.