Tasting Notes
This top-tier chardonnay is precise, intense and rippling with concentration and nerve. Fresh-cut new French oak offers aromas of grilled hazelnuts, vanillin and spice with nougat and ripe pears, grapefruit citrus and florals – very complex.
The palate has fine-etched acidity and savoury nutty barrelfermentation flavours. A piercing and linear wine with restrained grapefruit flavour, finishing crisp and mouthwateringly fresh.
Viticulture
This area of the Nepean Block was specifically targeted for a reserve quality wine. The vines were cane pruned to produce no more than 18 shoots per vine. An open VSP canopy was carefully managed all through the growing season with some leaf-plucking on the southern side once the nets were put on after Christmas. No more irrigating was done after Christmas to encourage uptake from the deep rooted vines of nutrients required for these special flavour profiles. Bunch thinning, to one bunch per shoot was practiced to concentrate all available plant resources into the single bunch.
Vinification
Whole bunched were top-loaded to the press without crushing or de-stemming and pressed to tank. After being left to settle for 24 hours the juice was fermented in varying aged French oak barriques. After ferment the wine was left on lees for 10 months with occasional stirring. The wine was prepared for bottling without fining and only minimal filtration to protect purity and complexity.
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