Pyramid Valley has returned to Hawke’s Bay, this time for Chardonnay.
Pyramid Valley has historically produced wines from the Hawke’s Bay region, with some very distinctive Cabernet Franc and Chenin Blanc made during Mike and Claudia’s tenure. While we may have stepped away from Hawke’s Bay in recent years, it has always been in our DNA.
It was time to return.
This time with Chardonnay, a variety that is deeply embedded in our foundations. The wonderful thing about Hawke's Bay as a region is that there are several different lenses that Chardonnay can be viewed through, while further south, styles tend to converge around the cooler climate expressions. For Pyramid Valley this means Low Burn Estate, Waikari Estate and the North Canterbury appellation wines which tend to be looked at through a Côte de Beaune and Chablis lens. Many of the great Burgundy producers have in recent years added wines from the warmer Mâcon and Pouilly-Fuissé to their portfolio. The question we asked ourselves was, could we bring a Mâconnais lens to our suite of Chardonnay wines with a Hawke’s Bay example?
To achieve this vision, we needed the right partners and the right place. Linda and Ian Quinn are without doubt up there with the best winegrowers in Aotearoa New Zealand, and lucky for us they have several parcels of Chardonnay from their Two Terraces vineyard in Mangatahi to choose from. This higher altitude, inland vineyard is one we have known for some time as home to the Smith & Sheth Quinn Chardonnay and an important part of Smith & Sheth’s CRU Heretaunga wines. The grapes always retain some beautiful acidity, and alongside the ripe citrus and stonefruit flavours, offered great potential for a Pyramid Valley style wine.
From the winter of 2023, Linda and Ian have converted a parcel of their Dijon 548 Chardonnay clone to our regenerative viticulture and organic fertiliser and fungicide spray programs, planted diverse cover crops and eliminated herbicides and synthetic pesticides. Better yet, Tāwhirimātea (god of the weather in Māori tradition) delivered two exceptional vintages in 2024 and 2025 with gloriously ripe Chardonnay, hand-picked and whole bunch pressed. To create a true Pyramid Valley expression of Chardonnay from Hawke's Bay, the juice was fermented largely in our beautiful Nico Velo concrete tulipes with our natural Pyramid Valley yeast and malolactic biome then aged on lees for 14 months before bottling unfined.
We have called it Kererū Road, simply because that is how you get there!
So in the same vein as the modern Burgundians, we celebrate the diversity of our Chardonnay winegrowing environments and culture. For them it is from the chalky coolness of Chablis through the grandeur of Puligny-Montrachet and Meursault, to the delightfulness of the Mâconnais. For us, it is from the soaring coolness of Central Otago and the bristling energy of North Canterbury, the dramatic limestone-infused Lion's Tooth and Field of Fire of Waikari, to the beauty and softness of Kererū Road in Hawke’s Bay.
Four places to stand, five wines that illustrate the fine wine potential of Chardonnay from these glorious islands in the South Pacific.
Steve Smith MW
Founder and Estate Director
Pyramid Valley, Smith & Sheth, Lowburn Ferry
Aotearoa New Zealand Fine Wine Estates
September 2025 celebrates the launch of the inaugural Pyramid Valley Kererū Road Chardonnay, from the stunning 2024 vintage. For current availability click here.