Winemaker Notes
The Madame Chard is a textured and vibrant white wine, filled with honeycomb and oak flavors, along with notes of bright lemon sherbet. Although intervention is almost non-existent, this wine has much complexity, depth and excitement to keep you going back for more.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Hints of struck match appear on the nose of the 2017 Harem Chardonnay, plus ripe pear, melon and citrus. It's medium-bodied, sleek and streamlined, with just enough flesh on its bones to let you know it's Chardonnay. Drink it over the next few years.
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Wine Enthusiast
Medium-gold in hue, this Chard shows aromas of yeast, apple, pineapple, cheese, smoke, onion and a copper penny tang. The palate is oily in texture, with a fair amount of weight but an equally fair amount of acidity that highlights flavors of apple skin and juicy tropical fruit.
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.