Our aim in crafting a distinguished Chardonnay is to produce a wine that is fruit-expressive, structurally complex, textural and flavoursome. We achieve this style by picking fruit with classic flavour profiles and with high natural acidity, gentle basket pressing, fermentation in new and seasoned French oak barrels, facilitating malolactic conversion and maturation in barrel on lees. These characteristics are a natural extension of our dry-land farming practices and other benchmark practices adopted from the Côte de Beaune. Unlike in other years, production in 2020 was supplemented with fruit from an over 20-year-old vineyard in Gruyere of comparable quality to our own. We are excited to share the resulting release.
Chardonnay 2020 – S21 Member Release
$60.00
Tasting Notes
Colour: Bright, light green-gold
Bouquet: The immediate impression is intense, complex and inviting. Fragrant citrus fruits, lemon-lime, evolve into intense white peach, fresh pear, almond meal and soft spice.
Palate: The wine is substantial and complex. Layers of stone fruit, pear and refreshing citrus characters are integrated with subtle oak influence and malolactic characters. The mouth-filling fruit, and savoury and creamy textural elements are underpinned by excellent natural acidity, producing a lingering and well-defined finish. An elegant, youthful wine.
Closure: Diam
Technical Notes
Our Chardonnay vines are planted at the cooler eastern end of the vineyard and comprises of majority P58 clone with 6 rows of an unclassified clone sourced from Yarra Yering. The north-west facing Gruyere vineyard fruit was all I10V5 clone. All fruit was handpicked, yielding less than 1.5 tonnes per acre. The fruit was lightly crushed and bunches were gently basket pressed, with the resulting free run and light pressing fraction sent to tank for cooling. Chilled juice was transferred by gravity to barrel (barriques, 40% new; French oak, of course), for fermentation with a selected yeast culture. During élevage, the wine received gentle lees stirring to ensure fermentation completed, and was then left to settle. After 11 months in barrel, the wine was racked off lees, lightly fined with bentonite (vegan) and bottled.
Alcohol: 13.0% alc/vol.
