Leeuwin Estate Art Series Chardonnay 2016

Professional Ratings

• 97 Decanter
  2016 was an outstanding year, with an early, fine summer with daily sea breezes. Slightly above-average January and February temperatures were offset by a welcome 90mm of January rain. Markedly floral, there's a white blossom character to both nose and back-palate. It's a concentrated wine with gently granular fresh and dried pear notes, accompanied by silkier white peach. Succulent, ripe lemony acidity is well integrated and gently sheathed by nougat-inflected creamy lees. Lovely lithe mouthfeel and beautiful harmony.
• 97 Robert Parker's Wine Advocate

  The 2016 Art Series Chardonnay is showing its oak at this stage, but the fruit behind it is as powerful and overflowing as it must be in order to dovetail with its élevage in 100% new French oak. On the nose, you get flowers and leaves; it has a wonderful "bush" aroma of eucalypt, spring flowers, pink grapefruit, white pepper, bay leaf and even a hint coriander. The wine is velvety and sapid, with layers upon layers of flavor bound by invisible threads of salty acidity. It's savory; there's graphite, there's minerality, there's white spice; and to accompany it, there are lashings of ripe orchard fruit. It's a superb wine. I remember seeing this last year and thinking, "Now is about the right time to start drinking these wines" (i.e., seven years on from harvest), and I'd endorse that window again today. Sealed under screw cap.

• 96 Wine Spectator
  Refined and elegant, this white is supple, yet intense and precise, with lemon curd, apricot, honeycomb and mandarin orange flavors, accented by floral and mineral details. The secret weapon here is the sleek acidity, which weaves in and out, giving the flavors definition and verve. Drink now through 2034.
• 94 James Suckling

  Love the aromas of coconut and pralines with cooked apple, lemon and pecan-pie undertones. Medium-to full-bodied, layered and complete with a juicy and savory aftertaste. Delicious all round. Drink now. Screw cap.

• 93 Wine & Spirits

  Art Series Chardonnay has a proven track record, proprietor Denis Horgan having long ago set his sights on a long-aging style. The key is old-vine fruit from a 1975 planting at the family’s Stevens Road estate. Tim Lorett gave the juice a little skin contact and let it settle for three days before fermenting it in new French oak barrels, where it later aged, with lees stirring, for 11 months. The warm vintage made for an expansive wine, even as the fruit retains fresh meadow-flower scents, zesty lemon notes and peachy clarity. The oak plays a prominent role, adding scents of caramel and rounding the creamy texture, while the fruit persists with elegance.

• 93 Wine Enthusiast

  This vintage of Leeuwin’s most famous wine boasts the textural prowess and tightrope walk of approachability and ageability that put it on the map, but it’s currently showing quite a lot of grainy oak and firmly pressed fruit, particularly as it warms in glass. A mélange of concentrated melon and pineapple fruit swirls with butterscotch toast and slightly nutty, salty seashell aromas and flavors. Nevertheless, the Leeuwin signature is still there and this should continue to age until 2030.