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Wine Description
The Story
All the fruit was hand harvested and delivered to the winery for whole bunch pressing. The juice was drained and racked to stainless steel tanks, where it settled for 48 hours. Pressings were kept separate and racked to stainless steel, where they were fined and settled. The clear juice from each batch, including the pressings, was then seeded with pure yeast culture and racked into French barriques for fermentation which was controlled at 18°C. Once primary fermentation was completed, malolactic fermentation then proceeded to 30% completion. After this, all batches were blended and the finished wine was returned to barrel, with its fermentation lees, in the end accruing 17 months in oak. At this point it was racked from barrels, fined with bentonite and isinglass and then sterile filtered and bottled on 27th September 2011.
Chardonnay starts it’s life with significant complexity and so is a very interesting young wine to drink. However, this does not preclude it from improving further with cellaring. Over the next 10 years the aging process will introduce more complexity to the nose as the fruit aromas are enhanced by new toasty and nutty characters. At the same time, the palate will slowly soften, leaving it with a sweeter, longer feel. This is our minimum cellaring recommendation and we commend the wine for at least 20 years keeping to see it at full development.
Vintage 2002
Australia 2002 was a cold year with plenty of winter and spring rain to support the vines for the year. Summer and fall were completely dry. The summer was the coldest on record. Fall had one of the warmest endings. All of this meant that we had very low yields of grapes and produced high quality wines. The grapes had a very good scent (nose and taste, more floral than usual), good concentration and good acidity. A great year for whites and maybe a few reds. However, it was important to pick the grapes very ripe and keep the nitrogen to a minimum.