Claire Rogers All about wine www.sunlive.co.nz

If you are looking for a great Chardonnay, then
I can certainly recommend this lovely Corbans
Cottage Block Hawke's Bay 2009 Chardonnay.
This creamy, highly-textured Chardonnay has stone fruit and tropical fruit characters, with a nice nutty influence. Hints of toasty oak come through from the fermentation in both new and one-year-old French oak barrels.
Personally, I prefer my Chardonnay straight off the shelf, I find the flavours are more intense, but wine is all a matter of personal preference. Easter with friends resulted in a lot of different wines being sampled, at different temperatures, with different foods. The various styles and flavours always make for interesting discussion points.
You could cellar this Chardonnay for another five years, however, I am sure serving it up with creamy crab bisque this weekend would go down a treat. Check out the video on this wine on www.sunlive.co.nz
The Weekend Sun has a bottle of 2009 Cottage Block Hawke's Bay Chardonnay to give away to a lucky reader who can tell us how many months the wine ferments in French oak.
Enter online at www.sunlive.co.nz under the Competitions section. Entrants must be aged 18 years or over. Entries must be received by May 4.