South by South West Chardonnay

A classical style Chardonnay with tropical, stone fruit flavours present, and with a distinctly supple, creamy texture, with well-balanced acidity and complexity. It is quite stunning, displaying liveliness and flavour at relatively low alcohol levels.

Sourced from the northern Margaret River sub region of Carbunup, with the majority of fruit being the renowned Gingin clone from Alexanders Vineyard.

This vintage was harvested slightly later, in the cool morning of early March. The reason for this was the mild, cool spring weather experienced all across the southern part of the state. These conditions were beneficial for our Chardonnay to maintain the fresh, bright aromas with some of the natural acidity. The Chardonnay was picked at a slightly lower Baumé to help restrain the phenolic nature of the clones used, and create a more finely structured wine, with slightly lower alcohol levels.

Despite its lower yield, the Gingin clone is ideal for this Chardonnay and clearly loves the warm, maritime climate of Margaret River. It has gifted our wine great depth and complex citrus and stonefruit flavour, due to the high skin to juice ratio of the grapes.

Interestingly, the Gingin clone is affected by a phenomenon called ‘hen and chicken’, where the less ripe ‘chicken’ berries are mixed in with perfectly ripe golden ‘hen’ berries. These little pea-sized chicken berries provide the wine with natural acidity. Fortunately, in Margaret River there are more ‘hen’ than ‘chicken’ grapes so the wine gets the perfect amount of acidity.