2020 Auntsfield Cob Cottage Chardonnay, Marlborough

Elegant and restrained, this gorgeously composed chardonnay shows ripe peach, rockmelon, nougat, biscotti, and oatmeal nuances on the nose. The concentrated palate displays excellent focus and fine flow, wonderfully supported by refined texture and finely infused acidity, making it splendidly structured with a prolonged, engaging finish. Drink to 2034.

95 Points Sam Kim for Wine Orbit, April 2026

Aromas of cooked apples, cedar and light vanilla with hints of nougat and mineral. Medium-bodied, it has fine linear tannins running through the center of the wine with a long and focused finish. Complex and precise. Drink or hold.

94 points James Suckling, November 2024

The 2020 Cob Cottage Chardonnay is powerful and yet fine, with a delicate phenolic backbone that supports the fruit that is blessed with more length than width—personally, just how I like it. It has white stone fruit, flowers, green apple, saline acidity and a support of subtly toasty French oak. This is a lovely wine. Like many New Zealand Chardonnays, it is quite ripe in alcohol but, here, with retention of requisite acidity to balance and retain freshness. Drink to 2030.

92 points Erin Larkin for The Wine Advocate, December 2024

Pale gold. A subtle bouquet with hints of green melon, chopped herbs and gentle savoury minerality; quite cool and restrained despite showing development. The palate has the softness and detail of a few years in bottle and its light-weight, zingy apple flavours are just concentrated enough to balance the crisp acidity, ending with a twist of citrus pith that gives it minerality and subtle persistence with some salinity. Not a blockbuster, but quietly satisfying as it unfolds in layers. Drink to 2028.

92 points Stephen Wong for The Real Review, December 2023

The Cob Cottage is one of Auntsfield’s reserve wines and made from fruit grown in a steep two-hectare northfacing block in the southern, elevated corner of the vineyard. Its old vines stand in dense mixture of loess and clay over free-draining greywacke, producing small berries with a high skin to pulp ratio.

The hand-picked 2020 fruit was whole bunch pressed into French oak barrels of which 20% were new and fermented with indigenous yeasts. The wine was allowed a eleven month rest on lees, with regular stirring for added weight and roundness.

About this producer

Auntsfield was Marlborough’s first vineyard and winery, established in 1892 by David Herd. The 65-hectare vineyard south of Renwick is today a Cowley family affair, with brothers Ben and Luc Cowley heading viticulture and winemaking, respectively.