Characters from this special vineyard in Ward give this Pinot Gris complexity and depth. The palate has an elegant structure with a creamy, textural midpalate and a long finish.

Mahi is situated in Marlborough on the north-eastern corner of the South Island of New Zealand. It was established by Brian and Nicola Bicknell in 2001, and in 2006 they purchased the historic winery giving Mahi a home and a sense of place.

The main aim of Mahi is to highlight the quality and diversity of individual vineyard sites in Marlborough. The name Mahi means “our work, our craft” and it was chosen to show that wine is their work, passion and craft while also paying respect to the history of the land and sea of the Maori.

Mahi produces multiple single vineyard wines as well as a regional Marlborough range. They source grapes from over eight different vineyard sites across the region having sought out the right sites, planted with the right varieties, a number of which are farmed biodynamically and are certified organic. The primary emphasis for all Mahi wines is texture, that offer true palate satisfaction and compliment food.

All the wines are made in a ‘hands off’ style to allow the true expression of the vineyard site to shine through. For the single vineyard wines the fruit is hand-picked, whole cluster pressed, fermented using wild indigenous yeast and aged in older French oak.

Our Marlborough Pinot Gris comes from one vineyard located just outside the township of Ward in the Awatere Valley. It is owned and managed by Sara Davies and Andrew Craig.

The fruit was machine-picked to bin so maceration was minimised and a portion of this juice was barrel-fermented in older French oak to give greater weight, though ensuring that wood is not evident on the nose. The balance of the wine was fermented cool to retain the fruit characters that come from this special vineyard

The final blend this year was made solely from free-run juice, as we feel it gives a more elegant and subtle wine, especially with Pinot Gris, that has quite ‘grey’ coloured skins and is inherently quite tannic.

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.