Kumeu River Chardonnay

World-Class Selections from New Zealand

"Exciting wines" you will want to drink!

2021 Kumeu River Coddington Chardonnay

#17 Wine Enthusiast's Top 100 Cellar Selections of 2023

$49.89 (750ml) In Stock – Buy Now

97 WE / 94 WS / 93 VM

2022 Kumeu River Maté's Vineyard Chardonnay

$71.89 (750ml) In Stock – Buy Now

96 WA / 95 VM

2022 Kumeu River Hunting Hill Chardonnay

$66.89 (750ml) In Stock – Buy Now

96 VM / 95+ WA

2021 Kumeu River Maté's Vineyard Chardonnay

$67.89 (750ml) In Stock - Buy Now

99 JS / 97 VM

The story of Kumeu River Wines (pronounced “Koo-myoo”) began to unfold more than half a century ago with the first generation of the Brajkovich family to arrive in New Zealand. In their small Croatian village Mick and Katé Brajkovich had experience tending vines and making their own wine. After a few years of working in the gum fields, the family moved to Henderson in West Auckland, where Mick, Katé, and son Maté worked in local vineyards and orchards. By 1944, they had saved enough money to purchase a Kumeu property with a small vineyard.

In 1957, Maté met his wife, Melba, whose grandparents had also immigrated to New Zealand from Croatia. During the 1960s the couple had four children: Michael, Marijana, Milan, and Paul. During the 1980s, Michael (New Zealand’s first MW), Milan, and Paul became more involved in the business and the winery took on a new focus: quality and reputation. The winery changed its name to Kumeu River Wines and began producing a Burgundy-influenced style of Chardonnay that featured indigenous yeasts, extended lees ageing, and malolactic fermentation.

In 2014 Kumeu River's London based distributer organized a blind tasting with the best palates, critics and wine writers in the world. Kumeu's Maté's, Coddington, Hunting Hill and Estate Chardonnays are placed against a range of Premier Cru and Village Burgundies from the best producers. Kumeu triumphed over top white Burgundies in every flight apart from one, where it came first equal!

These world class whites are now in stock!

2021 Kumeu River Coddington Chardonnay

$49.89 (750ml) In Stock – Buy Now

97 WE / 94 WS / 93 VM

#17 Wine Enthusiast's Top 100 Cellar Selections of 2023

Following an outstanding 2020 vintage, the '21s are, remarkably, even better. Coddington is the richest in the Kumeu Chard stable. Concentrated notes of honeyed peach, pineapple rind and buttered toast pulse with drive and force. The richness comes from fruit ripeness—the oak is present but in a supporting role—with a mouthwatering acidity. It's shapely, long and elegant, and gives Meursault Premier Cru a serious run for its money. - Christina Pickard, Wine Enthusiast

Stunning, fresh and vibrant, with juicy pear, yellow apple and quince notes at the core. This wine's details reveal themselves slowly on the sleek finish, where a whiff of smoke, a touch of litsea oil, fresh-grated ginger and a hint of jasmine emerge. Drink now through 2030. 700 cases made, 168 cases imported. - MW, Wine Spectator

2022 Kumeu River Maté's Vineyard Chardonnay

$71.89 (750ml) In Stock – Buy Now

96 WA / 95 VM

The nose on this 2022 Maté's Vineyard Chardonnay leads with candied bananas, pineapple husk, white peach and a hint of lychee, and the edges of the aromatics are feathered with preserved citrus, brine, curry leaf and apple skins. In the mouth, the wine is powered by supercharged fruit; it is crystalline in its way, an attribute that I have long-since associated with the Chardonnays from Kumeu River. The flavor is sapid and palate-staining, with just enough salt and savory spices in the fruit to make it super complex as well as powerful. It is precisely folded like origami, each crease in service of the overall shape. A wine that offers much and assumes nothing. 13% alcohol, sealed under screw cap. - Erin Larkin, Wine Advocate

The 2022 Maté's Vineyard Chardonnay offers tension, power and an unrelenting sense of moving forward as if your palate has been put on a travelator. This is its 30th anniversary vintage. Currently it's closed and young with little aromatic generosity. There's nevertheless purity and a real sense of density. The richness is there but it's held within a brace of tension, ensuring precision and focus. After a couple of days, it loosens up a little so if you're thinking of opening it early, which I don't recommend, decanting may be your friend. I probably prefer the 2021 for its additional austerity but that may be me being subjective rather than objective. - Rebecca Gibb MW, Vinous Media

2022 Kumeu River Hunting Hill Chardonnay

$66.89 (750ml) In Stock – Buy Now

96 VM / 95+ WA

The 2022 Chardonnay Hunting Hill is an impressive, focused style. It has a sense of energy, being almost buoyant with the movement of a skimming stone across your palate. There's a powerful core of fruit here and it has plenty of substance within its no-more-than medium-bodied core before kerpow! It fires home with an almost spicy kick. Clever oak use, reminiscent of toasted nuts, meets restrained flavors of lemon and lime bitter and nectarine fruit. A wine that's still in its cocoon so give it time. It may even have the edge of Maté's... Big call. -- Rebecca Gibb MW, Vinous Media

The 2022 Hunting Hill Chardonnay is mouthfilling and obvious in its outlay of flavor in the mouth—yellow peach, apricot, Golden Delicious apple, beeswax/lanolin and ripe lime flesh. The flutter of acidity that feathers the fruit is compelling and alluring in its power and juiciness. An exciting wine. It's a wine I want to drink (I will; the perks) and a wine I am enjoying considering too. It's intellectual and sensorial/corporeal in equal measure. The Hunting Hill Vineyard was planted in 1982 and overlooks Mate's Vineyard. This is a pleasurable, exciting, fleshy, complex, salty, kaleidoscopic wine. Excellent. Recommended. 13.5% alcohol, sealed under screw cap. - Erin Larkin, Wine Advocate

Also In Stock:

2021 Kumeu River Maté's Vineyard Chardonnay

$67.89 (750ml) In Stock – Buy Now

99 JS / 97 VM

#2 James Suckling's Top 100 New Zealand Wines of 2022

#13 James Suckling's Top 100 Wines of 2022

Lots of minerality with crushed stone, chalk, white grapefruit, peach stones, white apricots, wild herbs and lavender. Touch of cedar. Evolves to nutmeg and crushed almonds. Wow. It really builds on the palate, leading to a crescendo and intensity that blows your mind. Compact and phenolic, yet so agile and refined. Goes on for minutes. Drink or hold. Screw cap.- James Suckling 

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