Winemaker Notes
This wine is true to the Tolpuddle Vineyard Chardonnay style: fine and precise with firm acidity, and a combination of lightness of texture and intensity of flavour. The 2019 vintage has the natural acidity you would expect but is approachable, with flavour in the lemon citrus, lemon soda, lemon pith, spectrum. This refined cool climate Chardonnay suits many different plates, but we find it to be a perfect match with pan-fried sea scallops.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This has power and complexity and the right grade of reductive flair, overlaid on fresh yellow grapefruit and peach with flint and wet chalk, as well as attractive oak in the background. The palate has mouthwatering white-peach and lemon flavors with a deep draw of acidity that drives the finish in really deep, precise and fresh. Lip-smacking resolve here. Elegance, poise and whip-cracking freshness. Drink over the next six years. Screw cap.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2019 Chardonnay is the very image of Tasmanian Chardonnay—powerful fruit is wrapped around a glass core of acidity and shaped by flowing phenolics in the mouth. This is a muscular wine of pure form and has finely chiseled layers of stone fruit, brine and the beginnings of almond meal soaked in brine. There is also curry leaf, some mustard seed, freshly grated nutmeg and even some Greek yogurt. Best After 2022
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Vinous
Vivid straw-yellow. Mineral-accented white peach, tangerine, pear nectar and white flowers on the intensely perfumed nose. Fleshy and seamless on the palate, offering concentrated orchard and pit fruit, chamomile and toasty lees flavors complemented by suggestions of tarragon and sweet butter. Shows excellent depth and solid thrust, finishing minerally and impressively long, with lingering citrus and pit fruit notes.
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Wine Enthusiast
Tolpuddle has quickly risen in the ranks to become one of Australia’s most renowned single vineyards. The Chard is a rich, polished style that won’t be for everyone, but is still all class. Reductive notes of oyster shell and gun flint perch neatly beside baked apple, nougat and high-end oak on the nose. The palate carries out the nose’s promises of richness albeit with a good deal of refreshment. (This is cool climate territory after all.). Sleek, slippery and made for the long haul (drink until 2036, at least), this is a nod to Burgundy with Tassie roots.
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.
Directly south of the city of Melbourne and the Mornington Peninsula wine region, the cool-climate island of Tasmania has earned an honorable reputation as the country’s finest producer of Sparkling Wine. Naturally the region also excels in top quality still wines from Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Riesling, all distinguished because of a high natural acidity. Most of the Tasmania vineyards cluster around the eastern side of the island from north to south.