Our 2019 Reserve Chardonnay was recently tasted as part of The Real Review Top Wines from Hawke’s Bay with Bob Campbell MW. Hear what Bob has to say about this special wine, available online here: bit.ly/2019-reservechardonnay
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2021 Lillies Rosé Comment
Bottled just two weeks ago, we can’t wait to share our 2021 Lillies Rosé with you.A continuation of the style of previous Lillies Rosé with Bridge Pa Cabernet Franc as the base. This wine is light, fresh and dry but soft. Great with food, especially salmon dishes. The light pink/apricot colour is just perfect in this modern style of Rosé with modest alcohol and gentle flavours of red fruits. -
5 Star Ratings in 2021 NZ Wine Rater Awards.
We’re thrilled to receive 5 star ratings for our 2019 Reserve Chardonnay and 2018 Chardonnay in this year’s NZ Wine Rater Awards.2018 Chardonnay Tasting Notes: “A modern, rich, opulent style with ripe, rock melon, peach, and nashi pear on the nose with lashings of creamy, oak, and flinty, burnt match complexity. Surprisingly youthful on the palate. A taught, racy structured wine with salted limes, and grapefruit flavours, plenty of barrel work, and stone sucking acidity.”2019 Reserve Chardonnay Tasting Notes: “Wow. A very appealing, ripe, luxurious bouquet with golden queen peach, and apricot fruit characters with creamy oak, and lots of wine making polish. Richly textured, tasty, concentrated wine with layers of peach fruit, and a fine acid structure. A ripe style yet shows balance, and intrigue but with lots of oak right now.”We invite you to enjoy these special wines today: hancockandsons.co.nz/shop/ -
160 years since our our great-great-grandparents left Cornwall in England
2021 marks 160 years since our our great-great-grandparents left Cornwall in England; pioneers immigrating to a tough South Australia. To honor this, we named our Rosé wine ‘Lillies’ after the ship that they set sail on from England to the Southern Hemisphere.Learn more about the story behind this wine here: bit.ly/2019lilliesroséPainting: ‘Port Adelaide’ by S.T. Gill, Art Gallery of South Australia. -
Pruning 2021
It’s pruning time out in the vineyard. Our vines are loving the crisp Hawke’s Bay winter weather & ready for another season of grape-growing ahead.
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Vintage 2020 – Mid-April Update
Our 2020 harvest has been very good! It’s one of the drier vintages I have experienced in New Zealand and not too hot, making the fruit some of the cleanest I have ever seen. It will be an exceptional vintage – John Hancock, Winemaker
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John’s Vintage Memories #2
The upcoming 2020 harvest will be John Hancock’s 50th vintage. 1 in Burgundy, 1 in the Northern Rhone Valley, 7 in Australia and 41 in New Zealand. Take a trip down memory lane with John as he highlights some of his most memorable harvests.
Most memorable harvest?
“It was my first, in 1972. I spent the whole harvest forking grapes off trucks at Yalumba in the Barossa. Worked like a bastard! Loved it”.
Best vintage?
“2009. A hot, dry year. Fantastic red wines. Gimblett Gravels, superb wines”
Worst harvest?
“In terms of quality, it was my first in NZ at Delegats 1979. We had a huge amount of rain and a lot of rubbish fruit. Nevertheless, with a bit of appropriate winemaking, we managed to make Delegat’s first gold medal for a crisp, dry Muller Thurgau!”.
Get yourself a wine here & raise a glass to 50 vintages with John 🍷
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John’s 50th Vintage
The upcoming 2020 harvest will be John Hancock’s 50th vintage. 1 in Burgundy, 1 in the Northern Rhone Valley, 7 in Australia and 41 in New Zealand. A lot of wine under the bridge! 🍷
“I remember my first harvest well. It was in 1972 at Yalumba wines in the Barossa Valley, South Australia. 7am – 5pm, forking grapes off trucks into destemmers. This was followed by 2 or 3 hours of hand plunging open top red fermenters with a team of 4-6 people. The caps were so hard that you could walk across them. Hard work. I must admit I had a great football season that year, being at peak fitness. Health & Safety was a little different in those days, with a large icebox of wine readily available for all breaks during the day. I learnt quite a lot about winery design that year which came in handy designing 3 wineries in New Zealand in later years” – John
Get yourself a wine here & raise a glass to 50 vintages with John 🍷
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Vintage Update 2020
The 2020 harvest is shaping up to be very good in Hawkes Bay. The crop level is around average (certainly not big). It is always dangerous to make predictions regarding harvest quality at this time since so much can happen with the remnants of tropical cyclones. I have seen it too many times with a potentially brilliant crop being spoiled at the last minute. So fingers always crossed for a great quality harvest. 2020 certainly has the potential to be great at this point in time.
Our grapes in the Bridge Pa triangle (pictured) are looking healthy as they continue to ripen toward the upcoming vintage – John Hancock, Winemaker
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Bottling Update – November 2019
We’re in the process of bottling our 2019 Rosé at the moment and it’s looking gorgeous. A similar style to 2018 but with a little more fruit.We’re also looking at bottling the whistle label Chardonnay in mid December and have a special little Bach of barrel ferment Chardonnay that we will bottle around vintage time. It looks outstanding and is still being stirred every so often. A special wine, recreating a bit of the past!
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