Esk Valley Artisanal Malbec Merlot Cabernet Sauvignon

Built in 1933 by an Englishman (Robert Bird) who produced fortified wine from the 30s through to the 70s until the Esk name was created for a premium range of table wines. These days owned under the umbrella of the highly successful Villa Maria brand, although they do operate as an independent winery with their own winemaking team and vineyards including winemaking legend Gordon Russell.

The Esk Valley Artisinal range is a new fine wine range that’s been given a bit of what they like to call “the Gordon Russell treatment”. That means letting one of NZ’s true greats in winemaking roll up his sleeves and craft seriously good value wines true to variety and style. In this case we’re talking about a Malbec dominated, Bordeaux style red using fruit from the world famous Gimblett Gravels.

The fruit for this 2025 vintage (a cracker in the Hawke’s Bay by the way) comes from a single vineyard (and a bloody good one at that) called the Omahu Gravels vineyard in the Gimblett Gravels. The final blend was made up of 41% Malbec, 35% Merlot, 24% Cabernet Sauvignon.

It’s rich, jammy, plummy Malbec blended with soft, plush, fruity Merlot and and Cabernet Sauvignon for structure and back bone to the red along with those red fruit and dried herb flavours.

This is what the Esk Valley crew had to say about this latest 2025 vintage – “This Malbec led blend displays dark colour and seductive fruit with complexing Christmas cake spice notes. On the palate it is a medley of rich fruit flavours and dried herbs supported by a generous mouthfeel and age-worthy tannins. This is a full bodied and complex wine, and an ideal accompaniment to red meat dishes.”