Limestone, Sea Breeze and an Ancient Oyster Bed: The Making of The Briny Wink
Before it was a vineyard, it was a seabed. The limestone crags that frame the Tukituki Valley — pale, fossilised, quietly extraordinary — are what remains of an ancient ocean floor.
Shells compressed into rock over millennia. A coastline that has long since moved on, leaving its memory behind in the soil.
It is, we think, the most poetic origin story a Hawke’s Bay Chardonnay could have.
Where the name comes from
The Briny Wink takes its name from Lewis Carroll — specifically, from his 19th century poem ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter,’ in which a wise old oyster winks his eye, shakes his head, and declines to leave his bed. It is a small act of knowing refusal. A creature perfectly settled in its place.
We liked that. Because this wine, more than the others, is a wine of place. It doesn’t travel far from what the land gave it. It stays close to the limestone, the sea air, the particular coolness of the valley. It is, in the best possible sense, a wine that knows where it belongs.
The terroir: calcareous clay and the whisper of the ocean
The Chardonnay fruit for The Briny Wink is grown on calcareous clay soils in the Tukituki Valley — soils formed from the slow erosion of those ancient limestone hills. They drain well, retain just enough, and impart a mineral tension to the fruit that is unlike anything grown on the bay’s heavier gravel beds.
The cooling sea breeze off Hawke Bay reaches the valley in the afternoons, slowing ripening and preserving the natural acidity that makes this style of New Zealand Chardonnay so compelling. Not rich. Not heavy. Something closer to Chablis in structure — linear, mineral, with a saline finish that pulls you back for another glass.
In the glass
The Briny Wink is the lightest and most ethereal of the 2024 vintage trio. Aromas of lemon zest, acacia flower and oystershell lead into notes of fresh fig and roasted almond. On the palate it is medium weight — airy but not insubstantial — finishing with a slate-like dryness and a wisp of salinity that is unmistakably of this place.
It is a wine built for the table. Exceptional with shellfish, fresh crab, or simply a good piece of fish and the last of the afternoon light.
How long will it keep?
The Briny Wink is drinking beautifully now, and will continue to evolve gracefully for eight years or more from vintage date. The acid structure and mineral backbone give it the architecture to age. If you can resist it, a few years in the cellar will reward you with added complexity and a deeper expression of that limestone character.
Total production: 1,097 bottles.
