Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Coming from a 35-year-old vineyard, the 2015 Tarraford Vineyard Chardonnay comes from a relatively warm site for cool-climate Yarra Valley. This wine receives no malolactic and no acid additions. The nose reveals beautiful quince, ginger and pink grapefruit notes with nectarine and yeasty/toasty nuances, plus a real savory edge. Rich, concentrated and medium to full-bodied in the mouth, it delivers tons of flavor and great length.
Rating: 92+ -
Wine & Spirits
Creamy, leesy and broad, this wine is mostly about its supple, luscious texture for now. While there’s a touch of youthful sweetness, there’s firmness to the fruit from this cool, south-facing slope, providing a tight structure to sustain its evolution in bottle.
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Wine Spectator
The pear, peach and citrus flavors have a spicy side. Offers a smooth and succulent body, with plenty of juicy acidity and a saline hint on the finish.
One of the most popular and versatile white wine grapes, Chardonnay offers a wide range of flavors and styles depending on where it is grown and how it is made. While it tends to flourish in most environments, Chardonnay from its Burgundian homeland produces some of the most remarkable and longest lived examples. California produces both oaky, buttery styles and leaner, European-inspired wines. Somm Secret—The Burgundian subregion of Chablis, while typically using older oak barrels, produces a bright style similar to the unoaked style. Anyone who doesn't like oaky Chardonnay would likely enjoy Chablis.
As the most important area of wine production in Victoria today, the Yarra Valley is most popular for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, which account for over half of vineyard acreage. A gentle, rolling and rural region alongside the Margaret River, the Yarra Valley has a cool maritime climate with a lengthy growing season, perfect for these cool-climate varieties.
Two styles of Pinot Noir are possible here. The warmer Lower Yarra Valley with sandy, loam soils, produces plush and fruity Pinot Noir while the cooler, higher-elevation Upper Yarra Valley with soils of young red basalt, produces more angular and mineral-driven Pinot Noir.
Yarra Valley Chardonnay is among the best in Australia. To preserve the floral aromatics and fresh citrus flavors for which this area’s Chardonnay is so appreciated, time in barrel is restrained (though barrel fermentation is common). The best Yarra Valley Chardonnays display brilliant acidity, leesy characteristics, citrus, stone fruit and flavors of ginger and spice.
Shiraz and Cabernet find success in parts of this region as well.