All wine needs a little time in the bottle to recover from the filling process but good wine benefits from a year or so bottle age. Great wine will age and improve in a good cellar for many years. Our Estate Vineyards wines are all dry, medium bodied, fruit forward wines sealed with a screw cap. They drink beautifully within a month or so of bottling and are at their best in the first three years.

Our Showcase wines are fuller bodied, more complex, barrel aged wines that need time to show their full potential.

Elston and Cape Crest can cellar for up to ten years but are at their best between two and six years from harvest. Zara seems to reach its peak a year or two earlier than Elston and Cape Crest.

Bullnose begins to drink well within a year of bottling and then matures for ten years or more. To capture the fragrance and spicy fruit with some freshness the sweet spot is often three to six years from harvest.

Awatea is approachable two years from harvest and then gains finesse, fragrance and complexity for ten to fifteen years. Awatea is delicious between five to ten years from harvest.

Coleraine is a more structured wine than Awatea and although impressive in the first few years after bottling it really begins to shine five to six years from harvest. Coleraine matures to a peak ten to fifteen years after harvest and will then hold in that condition for another five or so years.

In choosing a place to keep your wine for any longer than a few weeks excessive heat and light are the enemy. If you are serious about cellaring, find or create a dark spot in the house where the temperature sits around fifteen degrees. In many houses and locations in New Zealand there will be a suitable place on the southern side. In the northern parts of the country, you might be looking at a refrigerated wine cellar, especially for white wines.

If cellar temperatures are too cool (closer to ten than fifteen degrees) development will be slow. If cellar temperatures are too warm (regularly twenty to twenty five degrees or more) development will be too rapid and some white wines will lose their freshness in a year or two.

The ratings in our cellaring recommendation chart are based on our company cellar which has a fairly even temperature around fifteen degrees.