Lani Gewurztraminer 2016

We understand how important winemaker Alana McGettigan is to the wineries of Europe, but we're delighted that this little bird decided to fly back to her New Zealand nest to create this home-grown beauty. Alana's talent and experience shines through in this Kiwi Gewürz and it's great to see her flourish in her stomping ground. It is balanced and restrained, singing a song of spices and far-out fruits, like star anise and guava. We're sounding like lovebirds now, but we just can't stop tweeting about it!

In winemaker Alana McGettigan's own words, Lani Wines is an 'aromatics-focused wine label'. Alana is a flying winemaker who assists in managing the harvest and vintage of vineyards across Europe each September. In particular, she travels to northern and central Italy, Sicily and southern France. For this project however, Alana looked closer to home and went back to her native New Zealand, to her aunt and uncle's vineyard. The vineyard is located on a plain by the Opawa River in Marlborough. Alana's aunt and uncle have grown small parcels of Gewürztraminer for several years and the vines are now eight to fifteen years old.

Alana McGettigan brings her expertise of the Gewürztraminer grape variety to the heavy soils of the Opawa riverbed. A lot of work goes into growing Gewürztraminer, which can be capricious, and Alana's aunt and uncle do a great job of controlling the yield to enable the perfect balance of ripeness and flavour.

Once the grapes were machine harvested, they were held cold in the press for six hours in order to extract some of the more delicate resins from the skins. 90% of the wine was fermented in stainless steel tanks with selected yeasts and the other 10% was fermented in aged barrels with wild yeasts.

A superbly aromatic Gewürztraminer, it has rosewater and Chinese five spice on the nose. It is distinctly dry with a sturdy, weighty and textural mouth-feel. A concentration of lychee fruit lingers on the finish.

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