2022 Pyramid Valley Springs Chardonnay

97 POINTS

Sam Kim - Wine Orbit

This is magnificent; gracefully powerful with enticing flavours, showing ripe stone fruit, baked fig, flint, almond and nougat notes, leading to a concentrated palate offering finely flowing mouthfeel combined with beautifully infused acidity. It's seamless and expansive with layers of complex flavours, finishing superbly long and gratifying.

97 POINTS

Sam Kim - Wine Orbit

This is magnificent; gracefully powerful with enticing flavours, showing ripe stone fruit, baked fig, flint, almond and nougat notes, leading to a concentrated palate offering finely flowing mouthfeel combined with beautifully infused acidity. It's seamless and expansive with layers of complex flavours, finishing superbly long and gratifying.

95 POINTS

Erin Larkin - Robert Parker Wine Advocate

Planted in 1983, this is from one of the oldest Chardonnay vineyards in New Zealand. On the nose, this 2022 Springs Chardonnay leads with cheesecloth and brine, tatami mat, torched lemongrass, yuzu curd, blond tobacco, and white pepper. It’s a superb-looking wine, complex and undulating but tethered to an acidic track in the mouth, so the impression is one of rich composure and focus. 14% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.

94 POINTS

Mike Bennie - The Wine Front

From best parcels off the Springs Vineyard, a site that PV favour for its quality of fruit and adherence to farming practices. Older vines too, per se. Flesh and pulp, charisma and depth of flavour. It feels fresh with its course of mandarin and pink grapefruit juice under honey toast, red apple, cashew nuts, talc, lime and flinty mineral elements. Has a slurpiness, a loose knit kind of frisky appeal and a deliciousness in the ‘comfort food of chardonnay’ kind of way, though there’s so much detail in mineral, fruit, judicious oak seasoning and savouriness to elevate. Lovely stuff.

94 POINTS

James Suckling

Pretty combination of fresh fruit and hints of wood fermentation and aging. Full and layered, with a texture that shows structure and brightness. Long and very flavorful.

94 POINTS

Dave Brookes - Halliday Wine Companion

Mendoza clone chardonnay from the Springs Vineyard on Omihi clay soils, planted between 1982–1986; barrel fermented and aged on full lees for 12 months before racking to concrete tulip for a further 6 months. Light straw. Ripe white peach and nectarine fruits, soft spice, nougat, wild flowers and crushed rock. Plenty of fruit volume here, a sense of compression, too, before tightening on the mid-palate with a lightly pithy, textural tug and abundant minerally energy on the exit.

92 POINTS

Rebecca Gibb MW - Vinous

The 2022 Chardonnay Springs is an intense, concentrated and firm style with bracing acidity. Carefully handled (hand-harvested, whole-bunch pressed and wild-fermented), the wine is rich in flavor intensity and texture. At this young stage, its time in barrel is evident. Grilled nutty flavors and salty/flinty characters of reduction overlay the restrained white stone fruit. It's tight, compact, young and raw. Give it time to shake off its youth.