Halcyon Days Musqué 2023
Te Matau a Māui / Hawke's Bay, Aotearoa
Chardonnay
10.5% ABV
Amy and Olly Hopkinson-Styles are two of our biggest heroes in the world of wine – dear old friends, brilliant winemakers and tirelessly passionate communicators within the global community of organic winemaking.
2023 was a challenging year in Te Matau a Māui, marked by the highly destructive Cyclone Gabrielle which struck Hawke’s Bay and the surrounding coastline in February. Yields for Amy and Olly were affected, but happily, the fruit that survived ripened well, and the resulting wines are, perhaps, the best that the pair have ever made.
Musqué was made from chardonnay grapes grown by Andrew Colman at the beautiful certified organic Osawa vineyard in the Mangatahi subregion. This particular chardonnay clone can develop pronounced aromatic muscat-like characters, and in 2023 this character was quite pronounced at the Osawa vineyard. Amy and Olly decided to lean into this aromatic style and ferment this fruit on skins for a week, before blending it with a portion of direct-press juice from another, more linear and driven chardonnay clone. As usual with Amy and Olly, everything was done in tank in an effort to capture energy, tension and purity of fruit.
We’ve grown to really, really love this musqué clone of chardonnay – largely due to the wonderful white wines of Cyril Alonso at the Conservatoire des Vignes Anciennes in Beaujolais – and we are thrilled to now have another expression of it in the shop.
Te Matau a Māui / Hawke's Bay, Aotearoa
Chardonnay
10.5% ABV
Amy and Olly Hopkinson-Styles are two of our biggest heroes in the world of wine – dear old friends, brilliant winemakers and tirelessly passionate communicators within the global community of organic winemaking.
2023 was a challenging year in Te Matau a Māui, marked by the highly destructive Cyclone Gabrielle which struck Hawke’s Bay and the surrounding coastline in February. Yields for Amy and Olly were affected, but happily, the fruit that survived ripened well, and the resulting wines are, perhaps, the best that the pair have ever made.
Musqué was made from chardonnay grapes grown by Andrew Colman at the beautiful certified organic Osawa vineyard in the Mangatahi subregion. This particular chardonnay clone can develop pronounced aromatic muscat-like characters, and in 2023 this character was quite pronounced at the Osawa vineyard. Amy and Olly decided to lean into this aromatic style and ferment this fruit on skins for a week, before blending it with a portion of direct-press juice from another, more linear and driven chardonnay clone. As usual with Amy and Olly, everything was done in tank in an effort to capture energy, tension and purity of fruit.
We’ve grown to really, really love this musqué clone of chardonnay – largely due to the wonderful white wines of Cyril Alonso at the Conservatoire des Vignes Anciennes in Beaujolais – and we are thrilled to now have another expression of it in the shop.
Te Matau a Māui / Hawke's Bay, Aotearoa
Chardonnay
10.5% ABV
Amy and Olly Hopkinson-Styles are two of our biggest heroes in the world of wine – dear old friends, brilliant winemakers and tirelessly passionate communicators within the global community of organic winemaking.
2023 was a challenging year in Te Matau a Māui, marked by the highly destructive Cyclone Gabrielle which struck Hawke’s Bay and the surrounding coastline in February. Yields for Amy and Olly were affected, but happily, the fruit that survived ripened well, and the resulting wines are, perhaps, the best that the pair have ever made.
Musqué was made from chardonnay grapes grown by Andrew Colman at the beautiful certified organic Osawa vineyard in the Mangatahi subregion. This particular chardonnay clone can develop pronounced aromatic muscat-like characters, and in 2023 this character was quite pronounced at the Osawa vineyard. Amy and Olly decided to lean into this aromatic style and ferment this fruit on skins for a week, before blending it with a portion of direct-press juice from another, more linear and driven chardonnay clone. As usual with Amy and Olly, everything was done in tank in an effort to capture energy, tension and purity of fruit.
We’ve grown to really, really love this musqué clone of chardonnay – largely due to the wonderful white wines of Cyril Alonso at the Conservatoire des Vignes Anciennes in Beaujolais – and we are thrilled to now have another expression of it in the shop.