Grosset Piccadilly Chardonnay 2024

A silky textured, inwardly concentrated release with fresh nashi pear, red apple, light gingery spice elements, halva and brine as the mainstays of descriptors. The potency gives a sense of power but there's control and elegance here, too. A graceful, salivating white of medium to fuller weight with impeccable balance and length. It's a star.

No Chardonnay produced in 2023 by the big J-Dog, but here we have the 2024. 300 cases produced. It’s clearly a very young wine, and released too early, though if you’re popping down $84, well, I’m thinking you’ll do the right thing and wait a while. Quality fruit. Quality oak. It’s glossy and smooth, pear and nectarine, nougat, fennel and white flower perfume, lime leaf, spicy biscuit oak. It has intensity, moves to ripe lime flavour on the palate, firm powdery texture, with a bright and juicy finish of excellent length. It offers polish and precision, and has something of a ginger biscuit and lemongrass exotic character in the aftertaste. Very nice. Exemplary, even. It could well be the best Grosset Chardonnay I’ve tasted. Just give it a year or two before opening.

There was no 2023 and the vines have come back with a spectacularly precise rendition in the cool 2024 season in the heights of the Piccadilly Valley! The tension of lemon and grapefruit leads out, building body of white peach and fig on the mid-palate that lingers on a long finish of bright acidity and the mineral tension of low pH. Oak is neatly enveloped, promising a long and distinguished future. Drink 2029-2039.