‘Chardonnay and oak is like tomatoes and basil – a match made in heaven’ – Greywacke’s Kevin Judd talks about his favourite grape variety

With his laconic wit and no-nonsense style, English-born Kevin Judd could easily be taken for a Kiwi. After decades in New Zealand, he has their straight talk down to a tee.

Judd, founder and winemaker of Greywacke in Marlborough, New Zealand, was in London with his wife and business partner Kimberley Judd to present the first-ever vertical tasting of Chardonnay wines to take place outside their winery.

From zero to world fame

The Judds are usually associated with Sauvignon Blanc, for good reason. It is their chief grape variety at Greywacke and made Kevin’s name. As the founding winemaker at Cloudy Bay, established in 1985 by David Hohnen, Kevin is a central figure in New Zealand’s wine history.

He helped inaugurate the country’s stellar ascent as a winemaking nation with Cloudy Bay’s pioneering style of Sauvignon Blanc in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

After 25 years at Cloudy Bay, Kevin founded Greywacke in 2009. ‘When I left Cloudy Bay, I had no money, no vineyard and no winery,’ he says. ‘But I turned 50 and I had some experience. A guy called Ivan Sutherland tapped me on the shoulder.’

Sutherland, who had been the viticulturist at Cloudy Bay, owned farmland and had established Dog Point Wines. ‘In 2009, there was the global financial crisis and there were spare grapes,’ Kevin continues.

‘Sutherland had heard we were thinking of starting our own thing, so we set up a business partnership. They also provided space in their winery. We still buy 70% of our fruit from the Sutherland family. We went from zero to exporting wine to 55 countries in the world. 95% of our production is exported.’

Chardonnay in the spotlight

Six Chardonnays, from the vintages 2010, 2014, 2017, 2019, 2021 and the current release, 2023, were lined up. ‘Chardonnay is quite a small part of our production,’ says Kevin.

‘We believe that Chardonnay in Marlborough can make fantastic wine, but it lives in the humongous shadow of Sauvignon Blanc.’

Most of the wines are made from the Mendoza clone of Chardonnay. ‘It has big berries and tiny berries in the same bunch, about as small as match heads; it is what the French call millerandage and we call hen-and-chicken. It is a clone that gives us immense concentration and natural acidity,” he adds.

Even when the fruit is fully ripe, the acidity is strident, which explains the alcohol level, the full citrus expression and the concentration of the wines. The wines also contain some clone 95 and a far smaller portion of the newer 548 clone.

High in the sky

‘We are at the latitude of 41.5° South,’ Kevin explains. Transposed to the northern hemisphere, he exlpains, this latitude ‘runs right through Italy and Spain’. In fact, it runs right between Rome and Naples in Italy and just a little north of Barcelona in Spain.

‘The sun is very high in the sky, but because we are surrounded by ocean, completely maritime, it very rarely goes above 30°C. On a really hot day, it goes to 32°C, but the night temperatures then are usually around 15°C. We get this incredible natural acidity and really intense fruit flavours,’ he says.

‘We get young winemakers from Chile and South Africa coming to discover how to make Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, but it is our climate that is so unique.’ He’s right: the sunshine and briskness of Marlborough is on full display in the wines.

Consistent style

The climate is indeed key to the style. All the wines are luminous, bright and punchy, with potent alcohols of 14% and above. In terms of winemaking, Kevin outlines his core elements for Chardonnay.

All fruit is hand-picked and whole-bunch pressed. If there is sedimentation at all, it is light. Most juice goes straight to barrel.

‘All of these wines had fairly heavy solid contents,’ he notes. All the ferments are spontaneous. ‘The great thing about wild fermentation is that it is a microbiological zoo,’ he explains, believing that the diverse yeast population at the beginning of the ferment lends complexity to his wines, which all go through full malolactic conversion.

All the wines are fermented in small French, ‘quite heavily toasted’ barrels made by the Tonnellerie de Mercurey.

‘I like Chardonnay, I like oak, it’s just like tomatoes and basil, a match made in heaven,’ Kevin quips, but notes that there never was more than 20% new oak.

Ageing gracefully

Throughout the years, he has held onto these principles and made no stylistic changes to the winemaking. The only change was in 2019 when he decided to age the wines for 11 rather than 18 months. He emphasises that this was a purely logistical decision, so barrels would not be empty for half a year.

The only reason the Judds did not show their initial 2009 Chardonnay vintage is due to its rarity. Kimberley explains that they kept fewer reserves at the beginning.

But the 2010, a favourite of the Judds, just shone. Having tasted these pristine mature vintages, the new wines, impressive in their own right, cried out for bottle age.

And while two debates were settled a long time ago, this splendid vertical reinforced without a doubt that New World wines evolve and mature beautifully – and do so under screwcap.

Greywacke Chardonnay: Six to try

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