Winemaker Notes
Blend: 100% Chardonnay
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Tarraford has a long life ahead of it and is quite young now. If you do crack it open, sip just below room temperature to get the full effects of the fruit purity (peach and lemon), fresh flowers, structured, toasty oak and subtle saline notes. There's a bracing amount of acidity on the palate but it eventually slithers its way to the midpalate, integrating with the slippery texture and oak influence. Drink now–2030.
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Australian Wine Companion
Quite a different take this vintage, as it should be, with its lavender, white blossom and poached quince characters coming through. Lime oil and stone fruit, creamy leesy flavours to the fore on the fuller-bodied palate, yet everything sits well, with acidity keeping everything in check.
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.