Crichton: We need to put Hawke’s Bay Chardonnay on the map

Convincing the world that Hawke’s Bay Chardonnay is among the world’s best is one of the biggest challenges – and opportunities – for brand New Zealand, says Vidal Estate’s Hugh Crichton.

Chardonnay lover Hugh Crichton is on a mission to establish Hawke’s Bay Chardonnay as being among the world’s best (Photo: Vidal Estate)

Highlighting the success of the Gimblett Gravels, which has come to be seen as a superior Hawke’s Bay sub-region for Bordeaux grapes and Syrah, the winemaker said a similar sub-regional focus could propel Chardonnay to new heights in the eyes of wine consumers around the world.

“That sort of thing is really important from a regional branding point of view,” he explained to db.

“Gimblett Gravels is just one sub-region within Hawke’s Bay, but that sort of thing helps to put Hawke’s Bay on the map.

“What we need to do though is to try and think of some way to get the Hawke’s Bay Chardonnays more on the map. This is more challenging because Chardonnay is produced all around the world, but I think our style of Chardonnay – one of freshness, good acidity, elegance, complexity, restraint – is distinctive.”

Crichton produces three Chardonnays at Vidal representing the three quality tiers of the company – Estate, Reserve and Legacy. He explained how the best Hawke’s Bay Chardonnays came from the sub-region’s cooler sites, such as the Keltern Vineyard.

Such sites are characterised by fertile but not too fertile soils, which promote sufficient canopy growth to protect the grape berries from the heat of the sun.

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The most important elements of the Vidal approach are to focus on sub-sections of vineyards and small-batch winemaking – fermenting and ageing wines from different sites separately to achieve the highest possible quality and to highlight differences of terroir.

“There’s one particular site called Keltern – we source a lot of our top Chardonnays from that vineyard – and in Gimblett Gravels there’s some Chardonnay growing,” he said.

Chardonnay vines at Vidal Estate (Photo: Vidal)

“It can get a bit warm [so] you have to be very careful with your picking decision. For me the picking decision is probably the most important decision of the whole winemaking process, because that really sets the framework.

“You can grow [Chardonnay] in warmer sites but you’ve got to be careful not to pick it too late, because then you lose the freshness and elegance.”

Chardonnay lover

Crichton was in London to offer db a preview of the 2015 vintage of Vidal’s Legacy Chardonnay, which is due to be released into the UK market in spring 2017 with an RRP of £41.

The first vintage was produced in 2010, and the wine is very much Crichton’s project. As part of Vidal’s site selection process, only the best quality fruit, chosen based on a blind tasting of separate batches, makes its way into the Legacy range.

If a batch of wine does not meet the winemaking team’s quality standard in this blind tasting it will be left out of the Legacy wine.

Only 22 barrels of the 2015 Legacy Chardonnay have been made.

A Chardonnay enthusiast since his time working as a City accountant in London during the 1990s – a time when he drank “a lot of Burgundy” – Crichton is convinced of the ability of Hawke’s Bay Chardonnay to compete with the best the world has to offer.

“I know Chardonnay gets a hard time and it hasn’t been fashionable, but it’s still there as one of the great white wines of the world, and for good reason. For centuries it’s made phenomenal wines. The challenge is not overdoing it in the winery,” he said.

Explaining that 2015 was a “really strong” vintage for Chardonnay in Hawke’s Bay, Crichton said that the Legacy Chardonnay was the “most natural” wine the company makes.

Fruit for the Legacy is handpicked and transferred to the winery in small trays to minimise fruit damage. It is then loaded by hand as whole bunches into the press from which it is gently pressed out into French oak barriques (45% new for the 2015).

Vidal Estate’s Keltern Vineyard in Hawke’s Bay (Photo: Vidal)

It is then left – without prior settling – to begin spontaneous fermentation, which is followed by 10 months’ maturation with lees stirring once a week, with a final two months in tank in preparation for bottling.

The reductive style

A distinctive element of Vidal’s Legacy Chardonnay is its ‘reductive’ style. Uninspired by Chardonnays in which the juice is cleared before fermentation and then inoculated with cultured yeasts, Crichton felt the flinty, ‘struck match’ character imparted by fermenting the unsettled juice gave the wine greater complexity and structure.

“For me those wines [those in which the juice is clarified before fermentation] are really disjointed – it’s about fruit and oak and nothing in between,” he said.

“Whereas we want to make quite complex wines – the effect that you get from the lees, the effect from the natural ferment…”

Commenting on the flinty, struck match character – which comes from hydrogen sulphide, a by-product of amino acids which have been metabolised by nitrogen-starved yeasts – Crichton said: “You can take that out of the wine by adding something but we’d rather keep it natural, keep it in there.

“Some years it can be extreme and some next to nothing. It really depends on your vineyards and your process. But I love it and you do see that in quite a few Burgundies as well.

“It can be quite polarising – some people find it a bit too much – but Chardonnay is one of those varieties where you’ve just got to set your style and then just stick to it. And we have enough people loving this wine and demanding it to keep doing it.”