Winemaker Notes
The nose offers aromas of lemon pith, white peach and crushed hazelnuts with mineral undertones. The palate is long, elegant and broad with a beautiful creaminess from the extended aging on its lees. A backbone of crisp and punchy acidity carries flavors of stone fruits, citrus and shortbread through a persistent finish.
Professional Ratings
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Wine & Spirits
Steve Flamsteed blends fruit from the Sexton, Tarraford and Applejack vineyards, fermenting it without added yeasts and moving the wine by gravity. While this wine is not as distinctly mineral as the Sexton Vineyard Chardonnay (also recommended here), its fruit complexity is fascinating. It’s almost red in flavor, hinting at persimmon and the red skin of a peach, with an herbal note, like lemon verbena, and a spicy floral scent of jasmine adding to the wine’s vibrant approach. Juicy and firm, the sense of luscious fruit is what lasts. Delicious.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: In my world of wine folks—ranging from cocktail drinkers to ultimate geeks, the 2018 Giant Steps Chardonnay is an outstanding wine. It is sure to thrill the majority of my drinking buddies. TASTING NOTES: This wine is beyond pure. Its bright and unadorned aromas and flavors of savory spices, ripe fruits, and earth should pair delightfully with a plate of nigiri sashimi. (Tasted: August 9, 2019, San Francisco, CA)
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.