2024 Nga Waka Home Block Chardonnay, Martinborough

Ripe fruit, baked apple pie, peach and vanilla, cinnamon. Full-bodied, creamy palate with ripe fruit and toasty complexity. Generous, traditional style and long, cinnamon roll finish. Smoky oak finish, some drying tannins provide dimension and shape. Really quite a bruiser! Needs a year to integrate and possesses mid-term potential. Drink to 2032.

93 points Stephen Wong for The Real Review, September 2025

A big presence in the glass. Lots of sweet stone fruit characters, nougat, honeycomb, cinnamon and cedar, some buttery elements, a touch of brioche, all wrapped up in slick texture, with a bite of acidity to finish. It needs some time to come together; you can see complexity, but the winemaking and the fruit are yet to be in full accord. Save some for later. Drink to 2032.

92+ points Mike Bennie for Halliday Wine Companion, March 2026

Nga Waka is a family-owned wine producer established in the late-1980s. Located in the Martinborough region of New Zealand’s North Island, its name references Nga Waka A Kupe, the three hills that dominate the landscape and in Māori legend are the canoes of the famous Polynesian explorer Kupe, carried inland by an earthquake.

Matt Harper leads the work in Nga Waka’s seven vineyard sites, his work continued in the winery by wine maker Paul Mason. The sites are in the immediate vicinity of the village of Martinborough and accredited by Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand.

The 2024 Home Block Chardonnay was barrel fermented in French oak barrels, allowed full malolactic conversion and lees stirred monthly during its ten-month oak maturation.