• Dark cherries
• Ripe plum
• Rich & supple
• Soft tannins

A full and rich bouquet, this wine is mouth filling, ripe and supple with good complexity. Dark cherries and plums combine with soft tannins to give a well-rounded finish.

This year, our 22nd, was again distinctive and again it was early and some serious rainfall at veraison meant that the berries were bigger this year, so the crops were slightly higher. Starting on March the 10th we harvested quickly and finished the earliest ever. It was not a hot vintage, so the flavours were retained, but we felt the grapes were fragile so picked quickly as things ripened. We saw early on that it was a bigger year and, with cooler easterlies winds predominating, we decided to drop some bunches early, up to 18 bunches a vine in one parcel!? This really helped as the vines managed to get the remaining bunches ripe and we were happy with the health of the fruit. April saved us also as it only had 19% of normal rainfall and we nearly had the last month of no rain, which was so good. Slightly lower sugars this year means the wine is perhaps more elegant and refined but it still shows the texture we are looking for.

This wine comes from two vineyards throughout Marlborough, both lending different characters to the wine. The Twin Valleys portion from the cooler Fareham Road area gives us the palate structure that we require, offering finesse to the back-palate. The portion from Ward, approximately 45 kilometres south of Blenheim, providing great depth to the palate, with rich black fruit characters. In the winery the grapes were predominantly destemmed before going to small vats for cold soaking prior to fermentation, allowing the extraction of soft tannins and colour at the juice stage rather than in the harsher alcoholic stage during and after fermentation. About 20% were fermented with stems or whole-bunch solely with indigenous yeasts offering a wide variety of flavours and helping us to attain better texture. During fermentation the skins and juice were hand-plunged on average two times per day. When finished the wine was taken straight to French barriques where it sat for 15 months. The wine was then gently racked, blended, and bottled unfined.

Mahi, meaning ‘our work, our craft’, began in 2001, fulfilling a dream of ours. After 15 vintages it was time to do our own thing. With a strong focus on single-vineyard wines, and now backed up by a series of premium regional wines from Marlborough, the idea behind Mahi is to respect and promote the individuality of the various vineyards. The Mahi symbol represents the strength, life, and growth of the native New Zealand frond (fern), with the understanding that wine should never be rushed to bottle, respecting its ability to evolve naturally over time.