Emmanuel Bolliger and Nicky Parish, overseeing Vintage 24 at Fareham Lane.
It’s hard to overstate how excited Marlborough winemakers have been about vintage 2024. The big story was that yields were down on the previous year – that’s the quantity of fruit that keeps the bookkeepers happy. But the phenomenal quality of the fruit has all the winemakers – the artists - very excited.
The cooler Spring, followed by the long, dry Summer, meant a smaller than normal crop. However, the rare seasonal conditions meant the grapes were able to ripen evenly and earlier than previous vintages. The resulting fruit was clean, aromatic and generous.
When you have extraordinary quality fruit to play with, you can really get down to the art of creating some pretty legendary wines – you know, the stuff that gets awards and medals.
"This will be a vintage to remember," says Misty's chief winemaker Emmanuel. "Although flowering was cool and wet which resulted in lower yields the rest of the season was perfect."
"With warm dry days and cool nights, disease pressure was minimal and fruit ripening superb. No pressure to harvest due to adverse weather meant we were able to harvest the grapes at their optimum physiological ripeness."
"The stand out wines for me this year would be Marlborough Albariño and Pinot Noir, but only by a fraction before Riesling, Gewürztraminer and Sauvignon Blanc."
Nicky Parish – our winemaker says: “Epic! Amazing. One of the best vintages we have had in a long time. The stand out’s would be in my view from the vintage are the Pinot Noirs, Chardonnays and Riesling, though I would find it hard though to fault many of the wines. Blending time has commenced and it’s fair to say we are pretty delighted.”
Expect to see some seriously gorgeous wines resulting from this past vintage, and we wouldn’t be surprised if winemakers really got stuck into doing some creative manoeuvres in the winemaking world. In short, if it has ‘2024’ on the bottle, and it’s from Marlborough, you can be guaranteed a damn fine drop.
Stay tuned for more!
