June 2026 also marks the beginning of a new era for Smith & Sheth, anchored on the theme of place, or more precisely, named places.

Since our first vintage in 2014 we have been carefully fine tuning and selecting our most distinguished vineyards, and creating our own new vineyard, Omahu, in the Gimblett Gravels. The 2024 vintage brought an end to the search and brought to life an entirely new era for us with the release of five single vineyard wines, all from our homeland of Hawke’s Bay.

Some of these wines have been made in previous vintages – but never as a collection – and for the first time, wines exclusively from our Omahu vineyard.

The wines are assembled in the Lieux-Dits Collection, a French fine wine term meaning “named places”, used especially in Burgundy for small parcels of distinguished wine from special named places. We have also given the collection a new livery, with the named place of the vineyard given absolute prominence. CRU will continue to be used for our blended appellation wines.

I am extremely proud of this collection. It is a true celebration of exceptional Hawke’s Bay wine, from a low-cropping, slightly cool but sunny vintage.

Three Chardonnays, three places

At the centre are three Chardonnay: two from vineyards you may have seen before – Howell and Quinn – and a new wine, Onewa, from our own Omahu vineyard.

Climate has been front and centre for me as we prepare for a series of events around the world that tell our Chardonnay story alongside the best in the game… the great white wines of Burgundy. Who would have thought that the Chardonnay grapes that created our 2024 Hawke’s Bay Chardonnays shared almost exactly the same weather patterns and warmth as the 2023 white Burgundies? Well, the wines share similarities, so maybe it’s not a surprise.

The three vineyards tell distinctly different stories of place.

The 2024 Smith & Sheth Howell Chardonnay returns after two tricky vintages with its typical rich, generous stonefruit and cashew nutty characters to the fore, balanced with the fine chalky feel that we only see from this vineyard and its unique calcium rich soils.

The 2024 Smith & Sheth Quinn Chardonnay shares the generosity, but with more energy and a cooler white peach, grapefruit, flint and gentle toastiness that we see from this higher altitude vineyard and the more acidic stony soils of Mangatahi.

The 2024 Smith & Sheth Onewa Chardonnay is named after the famous greywacke stones of the Gimblett Gravels. The inspiration for this wine comes from the way we used to make Les Beaux Cailloux at Craggy Range; thriving, high-density B95 clone vines in stony soils, producing a fully ripe yet composed stonefruit, pear and confit lemon flavoured wine with a lovely pithy texture and a long gravelly finish.

The 2024 delivers this in spades.

Two reds from Omahu

The final two wines are reds, redefined as single vineyard wines from our very own Omahu vineyard. It is a bespoke vineyard design, high-density, immaculately cared for and regeneratively farmed. There is no other vineyard in Hawke’s Bay designed and managed this way, and with that, these two wines have gone to another level.

The 2024 Smith & Sheth Omahu Syrah is a dramatic example of modern Gimblett Gravels Syrah. Wonderful floral notes, dark rich black fruits, hints of coffee and chocolate, with an old world seam of steel, iodine and composure.

The 2024 Smith & Sheth Cantera is also the first made from our Omahu vineyard, a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Tempranillo, mostly picked on the same day and co-fermented in traditional Ribera del Duero style. It too is a generous full bodied red wine but now with more refined gravelly tannins that seem coated in velvet.

Both of these red wines are drinking beautifully on release but if you have the patience, I expect they will last a generation in a great cellar.

All five wines are under a modern cork closure, Diam. This is a natural cork that has been finely chopped and treated with very cold CO2 and reassembled with a natural beeswax binder. The end result is a modern natural cork that is guaranteed cork taint free and provides a consistent ability to allow wines to age.

And finally, finishing this chapter, we are delighted to bring out of our cellar the 2020 Smith & Sheth Omahu Syrah. A truly great Hawke’s Bay vintage that was made in the middle of the Covid lockdown by our consultant winemaker Warren Gibson. The components were fermented separately and blended later.

Now six years old, we are starting to see the first signs of time in the cellar, with lovely cigar box and sandalwood notes and the pure black fruits changing tone to a freshly baked fruit cake and spice.

A bloody delicious drink right now.

Steve Smith MW
Founder and Estate Director
Pyramid Valley, Smith & Sheth, Lowburn Ferry
Aotearoa New Zealand Fine Wine Estates.