Clearview Estate Wins Best Wine In International Contest

Clearview Estate Winery is proving without doubt its position as one of New Zealand’s leading wine producers, taking out the Champion Wine of Show at the 2021 NZ International Wine Show announced at the weekend.

In a David versus Goliath style battle, the boutique Hawke’s Bay winery beat out national and international entries – 1780 wines from 220 wineries in total – to secure its second overall Champion Wine of Show two years in a row, and third in six years.

“We’re absolutely rapt and almost flabbergasted to take out the award yet again when we’re up against the big boys with big budgets from around the world,” says Tim Turvey, who along with co-owner Helma van den Berg, founded the winery in 1987.

Clearview Estate’s Reserve Chardonnay 2015 took the honours in 2016, while last year its Beachhead Chardonnay 2019 was chosen as Champion Wine. This time it’s the Reserve Chardonnay 2020 that wowed the judges to beat allcomers.

Judges, led by Bob Campbell, MW, New Zealand’s most experienced senior wine judge, acknowledged the wine as having, “everything is in place to make this a superstar of the vintage. Clearview Estate are the masters of this style of Chardonnay.”

Clearview Estate produces six different styles of Chardonnay and since the 2015 vintage, which marked the arrival of a new winemaking team for Clearview with Matt Kirby and Rob Bregmen coming on board, there has been over 120 gold medal wins for the winery.

“Chardonnay grows so well in Te Awanga,” says Matt Kirby, chief winemaker. “The offshore breeze in the morning and the onshore one in the afternoon means there’s no humidity, and that allows us to hold the fruit until it’s ripe.

“We get grapes with a wonderful acid base and freshness that means we can play with various fermentations to meet varying and changing consumer palates.”

“We started winning awards with our first Chardonnay in 1992 and it is testament to our vision and the dedication and focus of our viticulture and winery teams maintaining that high standard. This wine epitomises all the reasons why we planted and started making it nearly 35 years ago,” says Turvey.

“Our Reserve Chardonnay 2020 has intensity, balance and flavour with a structure that has audacity; there’s freshness and complexity.”

The New Zealand International Wine Show is the largest wine competition held in New Zealand. Entry is open for wines from any country and made from any grape variety. The 2021 awards attracted 1780 entries with the winners announced on 28 February 2022 due to Covid disruption last year.

Entries were received from Australia, USA, France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Argentina, Chile Germany, and even one from Georgia.

© Scoop Media