From the cellar: CJ Pask Declaration Hawkes Bay Chardonnay 2007 – $$$

This has bottle age and more.

When I first opened it, I thought it was a year or two too old. Now that I have sat with it a bit longer, and using the smaller-pour xl5, I see it is opening up, and rather than it coming to me, I am going over to it. I suppose it takes time and effort to ‘get’ a mature wine like this. To say too quickly, oh, this one’s gone off, is doing the aging process of wine a real dis-service. This was an expensive bottle, produced with a lot of new French oak. It was made to handle age. But how much age? Don’t know yet. I’ll know better after I work through a few more of the sleeping Chardys I have in the Pool Room…

I can say with assurance it is light straw in colour. It’s dense and structured, with bitter oak and nut and wholemeal aromas and flavours. Grapefruit, nutty, pepper, intense. A ‘learner’, I think. I wish I had another for next year. 4

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