REVIEWS
Chardonnay
Novum Chardonnay
“Fantastic wine, taut and youthful with a bouquet of flinty, fresh stone and citrus fruits, a positive, gentle reductive layer and mineral, fine lees complexity. A dry wine with plenty of weight and a satin mouthfeel, flavours range from white apricot and peach to apple and sweet grapefruit. Layers of wood introduce fine tannins and a natural wood sweetness, as well as added complexity and length. Well made, with best drinking from day of purchase through to 2032+.”
Novum Riverbrook Vineyard Chardonnay 2024 / 95 points
“This has a very elegant and subtle character, offering delicate stone fruit with a flinty note and a touch of pineapple, chamomile and lemon peel. Medium to full-bodied, tense and vertical, it’s almost weightless, showing excellent balance between freshness and power. Crystalline minerality with a lift of citrus in the finish. Long and pristine. Drink or hold.”
Novum Riverbrook Vineyard Chardonnay 2024 / 95 points
“Subtle flint and roasted pistachio notes give way to an unusually aromatic chardonnay with a vibrant, exotic fruit character reminiscent of pomegranate and pomelo over more familiar grapefruit and red apple flavours. The mid-weight palate is sleek and slippery, flowing easily over gentle notes of cinnamon oak before joining the amalgam of cashew, cloves and cream on the finish. An elegant wine which will soon shed its flinty shell and reveal more layered subtlety over the mid-term.”
Novum Riverbrook Vineyard Chardonnay 2024 / 94 points
“Firework flint, lemon oil and yellow peach cheeks. Grapefruit sorbet and cold butter log. Almond milk creaminess with a deft handling of oak on the palate. Cumin, powdered ginger and white pepper. This delivers the charitable dimensions of chardonnay with a breeze of gently rolling acidity and brilliance of a chiselled precious stone. Peach cream and baked meringue on the finish. Drinking beautifully and will age further. Wonderful to see the confidence and precision from a new player. Very exciting.”
Novum Marlborough Chardonnay 2023 / 96 points
“Elegant and concentrated chardonnay with cedar, citrus and spicy characters. together with an oyster shell/saline influence. Good now, it should be even better in a few years’ time once the punchy acidity settles down.”
Novum Marlborough Chardonnay 2022 / 95 points
“Fantastic bouquet with purity and freshness. Aromas of ripe, sweet citrus and gun-flint minerality, peach and red apple, a fine lees quality with with flowers and saline air. Equally fantastic on the palate with a fine silky cream texture, contrasting acid line and flavours that mirror the bouquet. Finesse and balance, charm and length. ”
Novum Marlborough Chardonnay 2021 / 95 points
“If there were a New Zealand Chardonnay that could compete with Barry White, here it is. The 2021 Chardonnay Marlborough is an all-sexy soul singer, savoury and lightly spiced. There’s well-judged salt, a pepper-like struck match note, caramelised pineapple, cloves and cinnamon. There’s excellent concentration and power within its suave core, but it never becomes heavy””
Novum Marlborough Chardonnay 2021 / 95 points
“The 2024 Chardonnay is excellent. It’s toasty and spicy, lean and nutty, with green apple acidity and attractive waxy phenolics that shape the mid-palate and finish. This is a beautiful wine, made as a result of thoughtful farming and endeavour. It has personality and charm, alongside length of flavor and complexity to boot. It’s leaner and less obviously “worked” than many Chardonnays I see coming out of Marlborough. This is super and comes recommended.”
Novum Chardonnay 2024 / 94+ points
“This is very fresh and alluring with precise fruit and lovely ground spice notes melding beautifully. White peach, grapefruit, pear, ground cinnamon, nutmeg, nectarine pulp, powdery peach skin, flint. It deepens with air to reveal apricot kernel, nougat, tangerine, water chestnut and a mineral element - the amalgam of which makes for a very interesting and complex perfume. The palate is at once intense and fresh with stone fruit and spice in the lead again with notes largely akin to the nose, along with a sweet essence of lemon curd and tangerine adding a sense of completeness. There’s some powdery phenolics and a good wash of orange-citrus acidity through a finish of crystalline length. This is very impressive - complex, charming, long and utterly moreish. Brilliant.”
Novum Riverbrook Vineyard Chardonnay 2024 / 95 points
“The classy, tightly structured 2024 vintage (*****) is a distinctive, single-vineyard wine, from vines planted in the central Wairau Valley “likely between 1979 and 1980.” Hand-picked, it was fermented and matured for 13 months in oak barrels (10 per cent new). Bright lemon/green, it is weighty and vibrant, with mouthfilling body, concentrated, ripe, stonefruit flavours, subtle mealy and biscuity notes adding complexity, and cool-climate freshness, elegance and length. Still youthful, it is a finely poised wine with obvious cellaring potential; best drinking 2029+.”
Novum Riverbrook Vineyard Chardonnay 2024 / 5 stars
Pinot Noir
Novum Pinot Noir
“A considered wine with balance and articulate detail of dark cherries, pomegranate and raspberry leaf. Its small portion of whole bunch almost outlines the ripe fruit, adding a stencil of sage and rosemary that brings the fruit into focus. Some savoury new oak, cedar, chewing tobacco and mace round out the finish. The crowning glory is the thistle and underbrush that pulls and stretches the final flavours of the wine. Some Swiss brown mushrooms and cherry pits. Still very fresh and full of energy.”
Novum Quarters Vineyard Pinot Noir 2024 / 96 points
“Alluring red cherries, fig hearts and lingonberry jam. Fallen autumn leaves and raw cacao beans. A smattering of orange bitters and apple skin. Densely packed, powdery tannins stand tall amongst the freshness of crunchy acidity. There is a pumice stone mineral quality and plenty of length and line. This is only beginning to hit its straps and will cellar well for another few years. Novum are bursting from the gates and taking charge.”
Novum Marlborough Pinot Noir 2023 / 95 points
“Energy and youth in the bouquet, a complex and detailed aroma package of fresh cherry and plum, boysenberry and red currants. The oak layers in spice and complexity and the stony mineral layers add depth and breadth. Delicious, fresh, taut, youthful and textured palate with core fruit flavour to reflect the bouquet. Ripe tannins in abundance with acidity and wood tannins for mouthfeel and structure. A young wine with cellar time ahead.”
Novum Marlborough Pinot Noir 2021 / 95 points
“Made with 10% whole bunch fermentation, fruit sourced about 60% from Quarters vineyard in the Brancott Valley and 40% from the organic Settlement vineyard. Super-delicious, with layers of fragrant, inviting fruit, spice, earth and florals. An equally beguiling plate. Seamlessly melded, good concentration and length in a very calm and graceful wine. Only tiny quantities produced so if you see it snap it up quickly.”
Novum Marlborough Pinot Noir 2020 / 96 points
“A complex and very captivating bouquet with scents of sweet oak and baking spices, a core of myriad red berry fruits, heirloom roses, soils and minerals. On the palate - equally complex, layered and captivating with fruit, barrel, floral and mineral flavours that reflect the bouquet. Fine tannins with a chalk dust texture, medium+ acidity and lengthy finish. A delicious wine. ”
Novum Marlborough Pinot Noir 2019 / 96 points
“The 2024 Quarters Vineyard Pinot Noir is excellent. With an abundance of silky red fruits, baking spices, attractive tannins on the mid~palate and balance throughout, this wine comes highly recommended. It has great length too. 13.5% alcohol, sealed under Diam and wax.”
Novum Quarters Vineyard Pinot Noir 2024 / 96 points
“Already delicious, the 2024 vintage (*****) was hand-picked from 27-year-old vines in the Brancott Valley and matured for a year in French oak barriques (20 per cent new). Full, bright ruby, it is mouthfilling, savoury and supple, in a highly varietal style with layers of ripe cherry, plum and spice flavours, complex, silky textured and harmonious. Seductive in its youth, it’s also well worth cellaring; best drinking 2029+.”
Novum Quarters Vineyard Pinot Noir 2024 / 5 Stars
Syrah
Novum Syrah
“Boysenberry, redcurrants and bloody meat. Ancho chillis, Hungarian paprika and crushed charcoal soils. The wine doesn’t feel over extracted but gently guided, with fresh acidity and soft, pliable tannins. Some amaro bitters on the finish and an intriguing orange seed note. The wine’s heart sits comfortably in the middle palate. Elegant and classy indeed.”
Novum Basket Press Syrah 2023 / 95 points
“A beautifully-rendered syrah with restraint, style and complexity which takes it beyond the usual fruit and oak-bomb approach of most of its peers. Marlborough might not be an obvious choice for syrah, but the wines have perfume and pepperiness. Will and Rachel Hoare have consistently released syrah of high quality and even in a cooler, wetter vintage they are able to pick perfectly ripe grapes.
Varietal and cool-climate aromas of lifted violet and blackberry with white pepper and black cherry unfurling with air. The palate is tightly bound by mid-weight, angular tannins which give definite crunch and grip to the structure, allowing the concentrated coulis of blackberry and dried herb to flow into the cracks, infusing the drying, spicy finish with fruit. A mid-weight and elegant syrah with lovely energy and perfume, trimmed in a just enough oak to be noticeable. (Cork).”
Novum Basket Press Syrah 2023 / 93 points
Ranked: #5 of 33 2023 Shiraz from New Zealand
“Like their Pinot, this is reduced on the nose but it doesn’t hide the sheer exuberance of fruit beneath. Blueberry, bramble, plum – not so much black-pepper spice, perhaps due to the hot vintage. Grainy tannin interwoven with fresh acid and the core of black fruit binds everything together. Plus there’s a meaty, ferrous tone that speaks of the earth and undergrowth. Elemental. A new Syrah to add to the top ten – but you need to wait for it to reach its peak.”
Novum Basket Press Syrah 2023 / 18/20
“Is the 2023 vintage (*****) Marlborough’s finest Syrah yet? From vines established “with the express desire to make a truly great Syrah”, it was blended with Viognier (3 per cent) and matured for 14 months in French oak puncheons (30 per cent new). It is dark, savoury, complex and structured. Full-bodied, it has vibrant, highly concentrated blackcurrant, plum and spice flavours, showing lovely density and harmony. Still a baby, it should flourish for a decade or two.”
Novum Basket Press Syrah 2023 / 5 stars
Rose
Novum Rose
“Fantastic wine, taut and youthful with a bouquet of flinty, fresh stone and citrus fruits, a positive, gentle reductive layer and mineral, fine lees complexity. A dry wine with plenty of weight and a satin mouthfeel, flavours range from white apricot and peach to apple and sweet grapefruit. Layers of wood introduce fine tannins and a natural wood sweetness, as well as added complexity and length. Well made, with best drinking from day of purchase through to 2032+.”
Novum Marlborough Rose 2025 / 95 points and Excellent
“100% pinot noir. The palest light-pink hues in the glass. This is strawberry guava, alpine strawberries and the purity of running river streams. Chalk soils, Pink Lady apple and rose petals. What more do you want, bone dry? Well yes, it ticks that box, too. There is also the creaminess of peach trifle and a berry pulp finish. Full of finesse and long lines of salivating acidity to keep you coming back for more; my advice is to buy a lot more than you think you need.”
Novum Marlborough Rose 2025 / 93 points
““This is a serious rosé “, says Novum - and I agree. A single-vineyard wine, the 2025 vintage (*****) was hand-picked from Pinot Noir vines, planted 30 years ago. Pale pink, it is tightly structured and vibrantly fruity, with vigorous, delicate strawberry, watermelon, peach and spice flavours, lively acidity and a long, dry finish. Best drinking mid-2027+.”