Not at all like grandma used to make it. Natural acidity, white peach and honey on toast.

Chardonnay in Australia has had a pendulous development. It gained a bad reputation in the excessive 80s (and into the 90s) for being big, buttery, blousy and like chewing on a large piece of oak. These wines were high in alcohol and highly viscous with little acid to provide balance or freshness. Many drinkers and producers had a knee-jerk reaction to this style as time went on, resulting in many wines being made with barely any flavour at all.

This wine is firmly intended to be a happy medium - a balanced, complex wine with a moreish drinkability. Made with fruit sourced from mature vines in the Moorabool Valley north of Geelong, we decided to pick with a relatively low sugar content (about 12 baumé), preserving the natural acids and flavours at the point of perfect ripeness (before they become too rich and overblown).

The juice was wild fermented in French oak barriques (about 10% new) and went through wild MLF in barrels. The full malolactic fermentation softened the acid and balanced all of the elements we want in Chardonnay; honeysuckle aromas, citrus and mineral acid, white peach mid-palate flavours, a hint of roasted cashew from the oak and a slightly creamy texture.

Wild ferment • Wild malolactic
Range: Core
Variety: 100% Chardonnay
Vineyard: Strathmore, Moorabool Valley, Geelong
12.5% / 7.4 std drinks

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