Tapanappa Tiers Vineyard Chardonnay 2020

Winemaker Brian Croser is pretty excited about this wine, and a quick sniff and extended sip, and I think I know why. Like the rest of Australia, it was a very small crop resulting in a wine of deep fruit concentration. Once again, the wine spent an extended time until February this year on full lees, allowing pick up of further complexity and textural mouth feel. The striking feature is the palate power and length. I have tasted many of these wines but I don’t think I have tasted better.

This parcel has performed so impressively in 2020, with trademark white-peach aromas and a subtle lemon-cream edge. The oak is so well integrated here. There’s impressive seamlessness on the palate with citrus-nuanced stone fruit carrying so long and fresh. Thrilling chardonnay. Drink or hold.

A quiet elegance lives here. Don’t overchill this wine or you will lose that inner beauty. The scent of white flowers mixes with fine-edged fruit qualities of grapefruit, Delicious apple, mandarin skin and dusty lemon. Citrus plays out on the palate with a grapefruit pithiness before moving into a warm, textural glow. Oak is nicely integrated. It’s complex and worthy of extra time in the cellar. If you can, give it that time.

The chardonnay vines on the Tiers Vineyard in the Piccadilly Valley are all now well over 30 years old though some were planted in the late 1970s. This is an intense glide of beautiful chardonnay flavour. It had me hooked straight up. There’s an amount of struck match character here too, for the record, though the pear, white peach, grapefruit and citrus characters are where the main action is at. This is delicious. This is powerful. This is lengthy. It feels a it wild, in a good way, but it simultaneously feels pure, somehow. It’s terrific.