Tolpuddle Vineyard Chardonnay 2013

Professional Ratings

• 96 Robert Parker's Wine Advocate

  Where the cool 2012 vintage shows almond meal and oat at this 10-year interval, the nine-year-old 2013 Chardonnay hails from a warm vintage, and that has built a robustness into the wine. This is powerful and long, with no break in programming over the palate. It’s seriously good, seriously fresh and full. The acidity is saline and refreshing, and it's woven with invisible threads throughout each part of the wine. With incredible intensity and lingering fruit, it’s simply awesome. This has entered a new phase of drinking here, reaching an apogee moment in time. Sensational. Best After 2022

• 92 Tasting Panel
  Light, bright yellow. Deeply pitched pear, melon and honey aromas are complicated by suggestions of tarragon and jasmine. Sappy, supple and round, offering poached pear and fennel flavors underscored by a strong suggestion of smoky minerals. Offers an attractive combination of richness and vivacity, finishing juicy and very long, with floral and mineral notes.
• 90 Wine & Spirits
  Michael Hill Smith and Martin Shaw, of Shaw & Smith, recently purchased this vineyard in the Coal River Valley, Australia’s driest cool-climate growing region. Tolpuddle, originally planted in 1988, already had a strong reputation for its fruit. In 2013, that fruit comes across as barely ripe peach skin and nectarine. The broad leesiness is a little distracting at first, but then the wine opens up toward richness, with firm acidity reading in a lemon-and-apple tightness to focus it. Decant this for light game, like braised rabbit.