Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine & Spirits
Dylan McMahon, whose grandfather planted the first vines at Seville Estate in 1972, is now the winemaker here. The vineyard, located in the Upper Yarra at an altitude of 650 feet, grew to six acres of chardonnay with additional plantings in 1996. This tastes like an Australian wine in the best sense: The fruit is fulsome and intense, with supple pear-skin flavors that last, with generous peach and apple notes adding fragrance even as the wine remains clean and pure. There’s nothing heavy or hot about it. Instead, there’s an underlying mineral tension, an earthiness that keeps the wine mouthwatering as the flavors last for minutes. Compellingly delicious.
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Wine Spectator
Supple and expressive, without much weight, with floral-tinged pear and quince flavors, finishing with tangy acidity. Drink now through 2020.
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.