Novum Chardonnay 2023

Chardonnay is the leading argument for ‘New Zealand does more than Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot’. The chilly maritime nation seems to pump out stunning Chardonnay’s, and this is no exception. Marlborough certainly has the vines and the local talent to carve out some stellar drops, Will and Rachel at Novum certainly seem to be as besotted with the grape as we are. High acid Mendoza (gin gin) clone, wild ferments, lees stirred only at full moon and a smidge of new oak lend itself to a toasty, singing Chardonnay you won’t regret.

Hand-picked from a single vineyard in the central Wairau Plains, planted in the mid-1980s, on greywacke stone.

Whole-bunch pressed, settled for 24hrs prior to transfer to French oak, 10% new. Natural fermentation, barrels stirred every full moon for greater suspension of lees. 13 months maturation before bottling without fining.

For them, it is not about simply ticking an obvious box, such as being organic or biodynamic, or choosing between interventionist or non-interventionist winemaking. Instead, it is about taking the best learnings from all areas of winemaking and viticulture and applying them to craft the best wines possible.

By sourcing special parcels, they have the opportunity to simply 'guide' the fruit through the winemaking process, rather than force it. This approach allows the wines to follow their natural course, doing what they want, when they want—such as undergoing a wild primary fermentation or a spring malolactic fermentation, for example.

One may wonder why they have chosen cork. For years, they have been testing corks, screw caps, Diam, sugar cane corks, and more. Each time they conducted blind tastings, they found that wines under cork had a slightly softer palate—warmer and more appealing. However, the challenge was the risk of the wine becoming tainted with TCA.

The Novum wines have been bottled using the new Amorim NDTech corks, which are produced using an advanced form of quality control technology. This technology allows Amorim to guarantee that the corks are free from detectable TCA, meaning no cork taint. They are one of the first wineries in New Zealand to use this new generation of cork.