Three Mt. Beautiful wines were featured in The Daily Meal by Contributor Roger Morris.

"Sometimes, tasting through a group of recently released wines is like taking a tour of the world’s wine regions, some well-known, others relative newcomers. Such is the case here, with three wines from the beautiful but barely known North Canterbury region of New Zealand’s South Island. Add to this some prickly and refreshing red sparkling wines from the region around Bologna in northern Italy, a group of geographically and stylistically diverse red wines for less than $30 and, finally, a deluxe, delicious and very expensive Champagne, and it’s time to bring out the wine atlas and start looking at its maps."

• Mt. Beautiful North Canterbury Sauvignon Blanc 2017 ($16). A sweaty sauvignon with flavors of green grapes and lime with a hint of cream.
• Mt. Beautiful North Canterbury Chardonnay 2016 ($22). A “soft” chardonnay with creamy fruit surrounded by lightly tart, dusty tannins.
• Mt. Beautiful North Canterbury Pinot Noir 2016 ($24). A light-ish pinot with creamy cherries and moderate acidity.

Read the entire article here. 

photo: istockphoto.com

Here's a sweet score by Joshua Greene of Wine & Spirits Magazine on our 2017 Sauvignon Blanc! 

This wine has also been selected as one of the Top 100 Wines of 2018 and will be featured in Wine & Spirit's October issue. 

93 Points and "Best Buy" 

“This grows on the east coast of New Zealand's South Island, the vines protected from the ocean winds by a range of coastal mountains. It's a fresh, substantial white with ripe notes of green pear and a buzz of orange-like acidity. For such a big wine, it manages to feel crunchy and coastal, built for sea bass roasted with fennel.”

Just in from from L.A. Wine Competition; matching silver medals for our 2017 Sauvignon Blanc, 2016 Pinot Noir and 2016 Chardonnay.

Well done winemaking and vineyard teams!

Here is a report on Vintage 2018 with combined insights from our Winemaker Sam Weaver and Director of Viticulture Fin Grieve.

Mt. Beautiful Winery Vintage Report 2018

Spring started very wet with 400mm of rain over September and October. Unbelievably there were no spring frosts, so the vines had an extremely good start and shoot growth was way ahead of previous seasons right from the get go.

The weather overall was warm (max 40 Celsius), interspersed with significant rain events which lead to good maturity. Growing Degree Days was at 1350, significantly up on last vintage (1230) and high for North Canterbury.

Rainfall was 1170mm, again higher than 2017 and high for the region. It was noticeably higher in Jan at 130mm and in Feb at 170mm.

Picking commenced on March 21st, ten days earlier than it had in 2017 and wrapped up April 12th. In total 533 tonnes of fruit were received into the winery, up 100 tonnes from 2017.

2018 was Mt. Beautiful's biggest vintage yet!

In terms of vintages, 2018 was a pretty easy one which ran very smoothly at Mt. Beautiful. Flowering was quite extended which was surprising given the warm weather, however, the resulting fruit set was excellent across all varieties.

The timing of the rains was such that the vineyard didn’t need to irrigate at all throughout the season, however, it also meant that the vines didn’t stop growing which created significant more hand work in the vineyard with trimming and plucking.

We experienced some disease pressure at harvest especially with our Riesling and Chardonnay. The vintage was relatively compressed, which meant that most grapes ripened at the same time. This resulted in some blocks being picked later with higher potential alcohols than we would have liked.

The winery worked exceptionally well and we were adequately staffed with our Assistant Winemaker Ben Weaver along with six interns who worked very well together. Our Vineyard Manager Garrick was also great to work with, and really helped the overall process!