The story of Nautilus Chardonnay begins in 1989 when the first wine was made from what is now our own Nautilus Renwick vineyard (you know the classic story – we liked the wine so much, we had to buy the vineyard). This vineyard has remained the cornerstone vineyard for our Chardonnay programme ever since. Throughout the ’90s, Chardonnay grew to be a significant and successful part of the Nautilus…
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Tag Archives: winemaking
Three Decades of Nautilus Chardonnay
Tags: Chardonnay, clive jones, Marlborough, new zealand, Vineyards, Vintage, wine, winemaking
View From the Top
We began making Nautilus Marlborough Chardonnay in 1989 buying grapes from a vineyard in Renwick. The fruit held such promise we bought the vineyard shortly afterward. Despite this early potential, it was undoubtedly a challenging beginning for Chardonnay in our portfolio. We struggled with inferior clonal selection, high yields and faulty corks – you name it. So in the late 90’s we decided to…
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Tags: Chardonnay, clive jones, Marlborough, renwick, Vineyards, Vintage, winemaking, wines
Nautilus Cuvee Brut NV during August
August is blending month for the base wine of our Nautilus Cuvee. First we assemble the 2015 vintage components, usually 2 Pinot Noir and 1 Chardonnay. These wines have been through malolactic fermentation and have been sitting on their yeast lees since April. Over this time they deposit a lot of tartrate crystals on the side of the tank as you can see by the…
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Tags: clive jones, cuvee, Methode Marlborough, sparkling, winemaking
ABC to BBC
Last week we attended the annual Australia & New Zealand winemaker’s tour road show run by our distributors, Negociants New Zealand. This 4 city whirlwind trip involves a bunch of Ozzie & NZ winemakers showing of their wines & certainly a fun time is had by all. Each day started with a series of master classes and Nautilus Chardonnay featured in the master class ‘ABC…
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Tags: 2013, Chardonnay, winemaking
Vintage 2013 Report
A relatively cool start to the season made for a few nights on frost patrol but we were lucky and no real damage was done. The rest of spring & summer went very much according to plan with the accumulation of growing degree days (GDD) looking remarkably normal. Then after Xmas suddenly all the talk was of drought. This meant angst for the dairy farmers…
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Tags: 2013, cj, clive jones, report, Vintage, winemaking