Stargazer Chardonnay 2023

From Palisander Vineyard in the Coal River Valley as well as fruit sourced from Bernard Brain's vineyard at Ouse, high in the Derwent Valley. The former was planted in 2017 and is a combination of clones 76, 95, 96 and 548, all but the latter on own roots. This block is south facing and is primarily brown dermosol on Jurassic dolerite, Bernard 's vineyard was planted in 1999 on own roots, the soils white silica sand over sandstone and clay. The site is north-east facing and of moderate vigour at approximately 100m above sea level. The clone is Bernard 76 and the vines are cane pruned and trained to a VSP canopy.

Stargazer vineyards are located in the Tea Tree subregion at the northern end of the Coal River Valley, the original 1ha vineyard on Back Tea Tree Road was planted by Norm and Jan Gangell in 2004. Pretty much half and half riesling and pinot noir, the property (eleven hectares in total) is also home to an olive grove. Samantha took over in 2016 and in late 2017 expanded the vineyard to include an additional two hectares of vines: more pinot noir (four clones), some chardonnay (another four clones) and more riesling. Stage two of the expansion was planted in October 2021: more pinot noir (two clones), gamay, pinot blanc, riesling, pinot gris and gewurztraminer.

Whilst still very new to the whole grape grower caper, Samantha and her new vineyard manager Guy Young are fervent believers in sustainable farming, biodiversity and regenerative agriculture. As part of this approach, they use sheep in the vineyard during winter for weed control, chickens free range throughout the year and scratch around for  bugs, bees contribute their pollination magic (and honey) and since 2020 we have planted over 1000 native species on the property.