2025 Beautiful Strangers - Orange wine

from $35.00

Skin Contact Blend

Blending varieties is like blending primary colours on a page. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Beautiful Strangers is an aromatic, orange blend of three varieties from two organic Te Matau a Māui vineyards.

These varieties are fermented with skins included, coming together from different sides of the flavour spectrum to make a wild and explosive wine.

Floral, red berry, orange zest and musk. The skin contact has provided light herbal, savoury notes to the nose. Juicy, yet dry at the start, this wine flows into stone fruit and tangy grapefruit with a fresh, saline finish and mild tannin.

Only 2368 bottles produced.

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Skin Contact Blend

Blending varieties is like blending primary colours on a page. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Beautiful Strangers is an aromatic, orange blend of three varieties from two organic Te Matau a Māui vineyards.

These varieties are fermented with skins included, coming together from different sides of the flavour spectrum to make a wild and explosive wine.

Floral, red berry, orange zest and musk. The skin contact has provided light herbal, savoury notes to the nose. Juicy, yet dry at the start, this wine flows into stone fruit and tangy grapefruit with a fresh, saline finish and mild tannin.

Only 2368 bottles produced.

 

Details

Vineyards

Mangatahi – 82% of blend

The Mangatahi vineyard sits on ancient river terraces formed by the braided Ngaruroro River.

Planted in 2006, the terraces consist of greywacke stone with a topsoil based of volcanic ash, alluvial gravels and silt loams.

Located inland and between two mountain ranges the organically farmed vineyard benefits from low rainfall, warm days and cool nights.

Raukawa – 18% of blend

Planted in 2003, the organic Paritua vineyard sits on an old riverbed of gently rolling and flat land beneath the limestone rich Raukawa hills.

The soils are made up of free draining “red metal” gravels overlaid by alluvium derived by loess, volcanic ash, greywacke and limestone.

Accompanied by high sunshine hours and low rainfall, this site is perfect for red varieties.

Season

Following on from the stellar 2024 growing season the 2025 vintage is another cracker. A warm spring with high sunshine hours set the vines up with all they needed and responded by charging along with great fruit set and healthy canopies.

A cooler period came through in January, which slowed things down, perfect for retaining acids and perfumed aromatics.

The rest of the 2025 season was near perfect, with bright, warm days and cool nights producing amazingly balanced and vibrant fruit characters while holding on to brilliant texture and acidity.

Winemaking

56% - Pinot Gris           

29% - Chardonnay       

18% - Sauvignon

In late February handpicked 809 (Muscat clone) Chardonnay from Mangatahi was destemmed and sent to a small open fermenter to lay on skins with gentle hand plunging, once a day. After 14 days it was pressed to tank to go through malolactic fermentation.

In early March, the Mangatahi Pinot Gris was 100% destemmed to open fermenters and hand plunged twice daily.

7 days later a small amount of Raukawa Sauvignon was destemmed straight into the Pinot gris to co-ferment on skins and after 20 days both varieties were pressed and combined with the Chardonnay tank.

Once the wine had settled in tank for a week, the blend of all three varities was racked to large old oak barrels, where it matured for 3 months at cool temperatures.

No fining or filtration.

Minimal sulphur was added a few weeks before bottling.

11.0% Alc

 
 
 

Floral, red berry, orange zest and musk. The skin contact has provided light herbal, savoury notes to the nose.

Juicy, yet dry at the start, this wine flows into stone fruit and tangy grapefruit with a fresh, saline finish and mild tannin.