Penfolds Bin A Chardonnay 2023

Partial wild fermentation on solids with regular bâtonnage; full natural malolactic fermentation in 60% new French oak barriques. The cool, wet and low-yielding 2023 season has built a Reserve Bin A with a core of spicy complexity and a crunchy demeanour. Grapefruit and beurre bosc pear are accented with pronounced ginger and textured with the creaminess of wild fermentation on solids with regular bâtonnage, full natural malolactic fermentation and the cashew nut complexity of high-class French oak. This is a season that contrasts the expansive generosity of low-yielding chardonnay with the tension of a cool, humid season, producing a style of deep-set complexity from the outset, making this an earlier-drinking Bin A of magnificent definition and presence, holding impressive line and length.

Reserve Bin A is a single region chardonnay from the Adelaide Hills. It spent seven months in oak, 60% new. There’s a pure chardonnay juiciness to this; it presents as the joy of chardonnay, if you like. It tastes of almond and talc, honeysuckle and rosewater, chestnuts and grilled peaches, with modest notes of steel and whispers of flint. This is a distinctive chardonnay, as characterful as it is juicy, as complex as it is pristine. The finish bursts with flavour too. There’s elegance here, and composure, but it nonetheless delivers plenty.

The 2023 Reserve Bin A Chardonnay is aromatically tight and ungiving—far less reductive, toasty and expressive than previous releases of this great wine. Perhaps it is still suffering from its recent bottling? On the palate, this is toasty and concentrated and yet still closed. The citrus flow of flavour intersects with the tight acidity, and this reveals the Adelaide Hills origin. While there is density here, it remains structurally quite fine and firm. It matured for seven months in French barriques, 60% new and 30% one year old. It was bottled with 12.5% alcohol, a pH of 3.07 and 6.7 grams per litre of total acidity, sealed under screw cap.