Huia Vineyards Chardonnay 2019

Huia Vineyards sit firmly on the more thoughtful, slightly wild side of Marlborough wine. While loads of New Zealand producers race toward ultra-loud Sauvignon Blanc that smells like a tropical fruit explosion in a garden centre, Huia tend to take a calmer route. Organic farming, minimal intervention and wines that actually taste like somebody made them rather than engineered them in a laboratory for supermarket shelves.

The winery was founded in the 1990s by Claire and Mike Allan, and everything still feels very hands-on and personal. Sauvignon Blanc obviously plays a big role because this is Marlborough after all, but the wines usually show more texture and restraint than the aggressively gooseberry-heavy style people expect. Citrus, herbs, stone fruit and minerality all sitting together much more naturally.

Their Pinot Noir and Chardonnay are excellent too, especially if you like New Zealand wines with freshness and savoury character instead of huge oak and jammy fruit. Nothing feels overworked. There’s a sort of quiet confidence running through the whole range.

Huia also lean heavily into organic and biodynamic farming, but thankfully the wines never become one of those “natural wine experiences” where you spend half the evening wondering whether the bottle is faulty. The winemaking stays clean, focused and massively drinkable.

Even the name has a bit of history behind it, taken from the extinct Huia bird that carried huge cultural importance in Māori tradition. Which feels fitting really, because the winery clearly cares quite a lot about land, sustainability and leaving things in better shape than they found them.