Te Mata Elston Chardonnay 2024

Reviews

James Suckling (JamesSuckling.com): 97/100 & #4 Top 100 Value Wines 2025 & #8 Top 100 New Zealand Wines 2025. Focused and textured, showing sliced apples and lemons with hints of dried pears and crushed stones on the nose. Full-bodied with chewy phenolics that add to the salty, subtle fruit. Limes at the end. Structured and impressive, this is a beautiful follow-up after the terrific 2023. A powerful and rather muscular chardonnay that highlights the quality of the fruit. 100% barrel-fermented and aged 11 months. Drink or hold.

. Emma Jenkins MW, Decanter: 96/100. First made in 1984, Elston has long been regarded as one of New Zealand’s finest Chardonnays. From the oldest vines in the Havelock Hills, fragrant with grapefruit, stone fruit, light sizzled butter, nougat, and oak spice. The palate traces a fine line of savoury fruit, very compact and subtle, delicately textured with good intensity, quite saline/mineral, subtle yet very persistent. Drinking Window: 2026 – 2040.

Erin Larkin, Robert Parker's Wine Advocate: 95/100. The 2024 Elston Chardonnay leads with gentle toastiness, which frames notes of yellow peach, flint and preserved lemon. The fruit was handpicked and whole-bunch pressed, with clones Mendoza, 548 and 95 contributing layers of flavor and textural complexity. Press fractions between 450 and 500 liters were isolated separately, preserving detail and site nuance throughout élevage. The palate is rich and creamy yet balanced by juicy, saline acidity that brings freshness and shape to the wine. Primary fermentation was inoculated, while approximately 75% of the wine underwent wild malolactic fermentation. Maturation extended over 11 months in barrel, with a deliberate move toward less new oak, utilizing lighter toast profiles and reduced char influence. The oak handling feels increasingly refined: subtle threads of French vanilla and spice weave through the plush fruit profile without obscuring it. This is a generous yet composed wine—it is soft and expansive through the middle palate but carried long by bright acidity and a fine mineral line. This is very good.

Cameron Douglas MS: 95/100.  Great colour with some green hues and plenty of silver polish. 33% new barrel underpins some of the bouquet the scents of ripe yellow peach and apple,  citrus quality all framed by a backbone of tension and acidity lead to some poise and length. Nut and extra spice, length and concentration. Delicious, fine and lengthy

Tasting Note:

Sparkling with a pale white-gold hue, Elston 2024 immediately reveals its richness on the nose. Its aroma is an intertwining blend of crème brûlée, toasted sourdough, and vanilla, with vibrant notes of grapefruit and ripe yellow nectarine. Subtle layers of oyster shell, hazelnut, and flintiness add further complexity and intrigue. On the palate, it delivers a commanding presence - rich and textured yet finely balanced by a spine of electric acidity building delicious tension. The vivacious fruit sweetness combines elegantly with an energetic drive, creating a wine of remarkable elegance and fantastic length.

Aromas and flavours:

Additional information

Type: White wine from New Zealand

Varietal: 100% Chardonnay

Vineyard: Hawke's Bay, New Zealand. The superb quality of the 2024 vintage was immediately apparent in the fully ripe grapes that were hand harvested from their separate, individual plots within Te Mata Estate's vineyards between 26 February and 20 March 2024.

Winemaking: Each parcel was gently whole-cluster pressed, cold settled and racked to new and seasoned French oak barrels for fermentation. The resulting wines remained in contact with their yeast lees, with a number going through malolactic fermentation. The finest lots were selected for further maturation, spending a total of 11 months in barrel with 33% being new oak.

The name: Elston is named for Elston Hall in Nottinghamshire, the ancestral home of Charles Darwin’s family. Darwin’s ‘theory of natural selection’ forms the basis of modern evolutionary theory, the foundation of biology. The wyvern symbol of Elston Hall appears on the label.

Alcohol: 14.0% vol

Total acidity: 7.2 g/l

Wine style: dry

Bottle size: 0.75l

Notice: Contains sulfites, milk.

Cellaring potential: 2032

Closure: Screwcap

Ingredients: Grapes, antioxidants (potassium metabisulphite (sulphites)), acidity regulators (calcium carbonate).

Produced and bottled by: Te Mata Estate, PO Box 8335, Havelock North, Hawkes Bay 4157, New Zealand

Distributor: vinabonus GmbH, Simmedenweg 40, 34134 Kassel.

To all Chardonnay wines