Tuesday 26 April 2016

Unison Vineyard wine tasting

This month's wine tasting featured a selection of wines from Unison Vineyard. Unison is a family estate winery in the heart of the Gimblett Gravels winegrowing district in Hawke's Bay. Owned since 2008 by Terry Horn and her husband, Philip, Unison was established back in 1993 and specialises in producing small batches of fine wines.

Unison Vineyard grows mostly red grapes on their almost 8 hectare block but have diversified by starting to make some white wines from grapes grown on other vineyards. Each small batch may be just 200-300 cases, bottled on site at their own bottling plant which they also used to bottle for other boutique wineries.

Onto the wine tasting. There was a clear winner, a maybe and several nos for our wine list.

2012 Pinot Gris. Pinot gris was the first white wine grown at Unison. It's slightly fruity up front then gives way to a softer taste than its smell, making its way onto our yes list.

2013 Reserve Chardonnay. This chardonnay is half oaked (just six months on French oak), which leaves it with a subtle, smooth finish. Maybe.

2013 Rose. This wine is one of four roses produced at Unison. The merlot-cabernet-syrah blend gave it an orangey-red colour (after being left on skins for 24 hours) but left it with a taste too similar to altar wine for me. No.

2010 Reserve Merlot.
2010 Classic Blend. Merlot-cabertnet blend.
2010 Selection. Cabernet-merlot blend.
2012 Syrah.
None of the above. We're still not red wine drinkers, no matter how alluring the deep red colour looks.

Mr Weka did very well tonight by winning the wine club birthday draw, giving him a choice of any bottle from tonight's tasting (he chose the pinot gris) and scoring a bonus prize of a $50 voucher to spend at Unison's Unwined Cafe. It looks we'll need to have another Hawke's Bay wine weekend next summer with Unison Vineyard at the top of our list of wineries to visit.

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