Showing all 13 results

• White Wine

  2012 Fiano, Chalmers

  £1995

  The high acid, bold flavoured Campanian grape Fiano has really found it’s second home in Australia, especially in Heathcote where it regularly outshines the red grapes on the same site in a traditional red-wine growing region. Chalmers have a museum of Fiano wines dating back over a decade with even the older wines still singing. The 2012 Chalmers Fiano is no exception, melding delicate stone fruits and almond blossom with savoury lees contact characters and minerality, displaying texture and power in the mouth whilst retaining a fine, fresh finish.

  Chalmers Fiano is whole bunch pressed and fermented on solids, 10% in old French oak barriques, 90% in stainless steel tanks without yeast addition. The temperature of fermentation is limited to 15 degrees. After fermentation is finished the wine rests on lees in tank for 6 – 9 months before being bottled.  The Fiano is then aged in bottle for a further 24 months before release allowing the wine to develop in richness and texture.

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• White Wine

  2012 Grésy Chardonnay Langhe DOC, Marchesi di Grésy

  £2995

  Piemonte produces some of the finest, most Burgundian, examples of Chardonnay in Italy. This is one of the best – a complex barrel-aged style, and one of Italy’s finest examples of the grape. The Chardonnay grapes are sourced from two parcels of vines. One is in Barbaresco, just below Martinenga, facing south-west at an altitude of 230m. The second is on the north-east side of Monte Aribaldo in the commune of Treiso, 370 metres above sea level.

  Ripe, honeyed style with intense hazelnut, nougat, caramel and butter on the nose. A generous silky textured mouth feel is nuanced and savoury with fine citrus and stone fruit characters and taut acidity. Layered and complex with subtle use of oak giving an elegant style with notable minerality. Perfectly balanced, with considerable length.

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• White Wine

  2012 Columbia Valley Chardonnay, L’Ecole No.41

  £3500

  Aromas of butter and toast are joined by mango, poached pear and Spanish almonds. The wine underwent surlie aging and was stirred for six months, which accounts for the rich entry and buttery mid-palate, but there’s not as much of the oak flavours that were hinted at in the nose. Instead, the theme is carried by apricot and sweet pear with a bite of Golden Delicious apple in the finish.

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• White Wine

  2012 Arthurs Creek Chardonnay, Giant Steps

  £3600

  The most restrained of the single-vineyard chardonnays from Giant Steps, this has an air of power to it.    The 2012 Arthurs Creek Chardonnay is a wine of wonderful texture and intensity has is representative of its old vine vineyard. Marked by punchy, pineapple and citrus aromas, this is a medium-bodied Chardonnay with ample richness and texture. Custard and citrus flavours finish long and mouthwatering.  This wine is a rare beast as it is no longer made.   A delicious taste of history!

   

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• White Wine

  2012 Riesling Spätlese, Wehlener Sonnenuhr, Dr Loosen

  £3600

  Wehlener Sonnenuhr is a precipitously steep and rocky vineyard that yields some of the most elegant and sophisticated white wines in the world. It has very light soil and the purest blue slate of any Mosel vineyard. This gives the wine a lively minerality and a delicate, crisp acidity that perfectly balances the bright flavours of white peach and lemon. It’s an aristocratic and charming wine that dances gracefully on the palate.

  Spätlese is a richer, bolder style of Riesling made from healthy grapes harvested a week or more later than Kabinett. The longer hang time increases the sugar ripeness of the fruit, giving it higher potential alcohol (11–12 percent). It also increases the “aromatic ripeness,” which brings deeper, more developed white and yellow fruit flavours to the wine. Fermentation is stopped at a finished alcohol level similar to Kabinett. Since the potential alcohol of the unfermented juice is higher, Spätlese will typically have more residual sweetness than Kabinett.

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• White Wine

  2012 Maragle Chardonnay, Eden Road

  £3650

  The Eden Road Maragle Chardonnay is a stunning wine and it’s often compared to Grand Cru Chablis in terms of its style, texture and flavours.

  The grapes used for this Maragle chardonnay come from a small vineyard in the Maragle Valley, south of the Tumbarumba village, at an altitude of 400 metres above sea level. It is a unique site that generally produces more powerfully structured chardonnay compared to other vineyards in the region.

  The aroma presents a complex, yet pristine notes of grapefruit, citrus blossom and white peach, with a touch of struck match character. The gorgeous palate also reveals pear, green apple and pristine minerality, mouth-watering freshness that is the alpine snowy mountains. On the palate it is beautifully long, powerful, driven with elegance & restraint.
  The winemaking is kept very simple in order to express the terroir of this special Maragle vineyard. The fruit is handpicked and whole bunch pressed directly to French oak without settling. The juice is then simply fermented and matured in French oak with some ‘battonage’ stirring for 12 months.

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• White Wine

  2012 Central Coast Viognier, Alban Vineyards

  £3950

  John Alban is more than a wine producer: Robert Parker has described him as the “spiritual and qualitative leader of the Rhône Ranger movement”: his impact on wine production in California is not to be understated.  Established in 1989, Alban Vineyards represents California’s first winery and vineyard dedicated exclusively to the varietals of the Rhône at a time when anything that was neither Cabernet nor Chardonnay was barely grown in California, Alban was a groundbreaking project and has gone on to be regarded as one of the U.S.A’s best and most influential producers.

  Aromatic and floral. Forward and fruity with notes of lychee, pear and stone fruit. North County fruit brings rich texture and body while estate fruit adds floral notes, minerals and balancing acidity. It is 25% barrel fermented in a mixture of new and used French oak. This is an intense, full-bodied style with considerable weight, luscious and delicious.

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• White Wine

  2012 Faultline Chardonnay, Kooyong

  £4200

  This is handpicked, single-site chardonnay at its very best — a whole bunch of pressed grapes, fermented with natural yeasts and left on its lees for 12 months. It’s a pretty hands-off process, really, but that’s the secret to letting the character of the site show its true colours. The result is a wine layered with complex savoury notes matched with crystalline, fresh, zesty fruit that fills the palate. Flinty mineral characters lead to grapefruit and lemon zest fruit while the barrel influence brings softer nougat, cashew and toast.

  This wine can be drunk now or cellared for another 5-8 years for something very special!

  The Faultline Vineyard 

  Faultline, the largest block at Kooyong, is planted predominantly to Chardonnay in an area where the soils are characterised by a friable dark brown loamy clay.    Adjacent to the Farrago block to the West, the Faultline block is more gently sloping. The block is bounded by a geological fault that runs along the south-western end, beyond which the soil becomes quite poorly drained. Before this fault, however, the soils are well-drained and high in organic matter.   The Chardonnay from the Faultline block is rich and full, defined by generosity of texture while still supported by Kooyong’s inherent minerality.

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• White Wine

  2012 Farrago Chardonnay, Kooyong

  £4200

  This 2012 Farrago is supremely elegant, complex and balanced, seamless and so aromatic.  Reminiscent of Puligny Montrachet – peach, melon and nectarine knit with fresh vanilla oak and underpinned by nuances of grapefruit, ginger and cloves.

  Thre palate just feels beautiful on the tongue. Smooth and creamy, with delightful roundness and fatness, it’s long, pristine and tightly focussed, with intense stonefruit, melon and citrus flavours deftly knit with vanilla oak and wrapped in a racy acidity.  The finish lingers for a ridiculously long time.   White Burgundy of this quality would cost you triple.

  The Farrago Vineyard

  Exclusively planted to Chardonnay, this small block is gently north-sloping with sediments ranging from those higher in sand to those higher in clay.  The best fruit within the block comes from the zone higher in clay where the soil has a mottled appearance due to high sandstone pebble content, hence the block’s name Farrago.   The Chardonnay from the Farrago block is defined by a precise linear character with strong silicaceous minerality. At its best, this is the premier white wine with the greatest ageing potential.

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• White Wine

  2012 Trevarrick Riesling, Skillogalee

  £4500

  “Trevarrick” was the original name of the property when it was first settled by John and Anne Trestrail in the 1850s. More than a century later, in 1970 this magnificent piece of land was planted to vines and Skillogalee was born. With each individual contour block on the estate harvested and vinified individually, the Trevarrick name is reserved for those contours which exhibit exceptional quality and varietal character.

  The grapes for this wine were selectively harvested from the highest altitude, earliest ripening contour on the property at around 500m. The stony, thin soils and topography of this part of the vineyard produce unique, high-quality grapes bursting with varietal character.

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• White Wine

  2012 Hanlin Hill Riesling, Petaluma – Magnum

  £6500

  This is rightly regarded as one of Australia’s great Rieslings and this 2012 vintage in magnum is a perfectly aged example of this magnificent Riesling

  In the glass, the nose displays aromas of lemon and lime followed by some orange rind and minerals. Possessing excellent intensity the palate is filled with mineral-infused lemon and lime flavours followed by some orange rind with a crisp minerally finish. Excellent length with long lime, citrus and mineral aftertaste.

  The Hanlin Hill vineyard was planted in 1968 (by Len Evans) on a west-facing slope on the eastern edge of the Clare Valley at a relatively high altitude of 550m.

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• White Wine

  2012 Hapgood Chardonnay, Clifton Brewer

  £12500

  This is a stunning Chardonnay, one with all the dials were turned up, and in a good way!  It’s a full-bodied, richly textured and layered Chardonnay that has explosive aromas of honeysuckle, jasmine, lime, struck match and yeastiness.  The palate lives up to the nose and offers vivid tension with a core of pineapple leading to complex tones of exotic fruits, apple tart, brioche and toasted nuts.   The finish is long and textured with mouthwatering acidity that bounds well for a few more years of ageing.

  At Brewer Clifton they strive to remove the winemaker’s signature, allowing the voice of the vineyard to be the overriding expression.  Only neutral barrels are employed and they strive for whole cluster fermentation, interestingly the fruit from each vineyard is handled identically from harvest to bottling, allowing the true essence of each site to be expressed.

  They also farm with a focus of ripening the stems of the bunch alongside the fruit, allowing the cluster to be in harmony. Working with the stems allows for wines that are structured, earthy and balanced with the exceptional Santa Rita Hills fruit. The analogy they use is roasting fish or meat on the bone, the bone offers complex flavours very different than taking it off of the bone to cook it.

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• White Wine

  2012 3D Chardonnay, Clifton Brewer

  £12500

  This is an outstanding Chardonnay from the renowned Brewer-Clifton. The 3D vineyard is nestled between Lafond and Ampelos in the Santa Rita Hills and was the first vineyard planted by the Greg Brewer and Steve Clifton in 2007.

  This 2012 3D Chardonnay is a deeply textured wine that is brimming with complexity and nuance.   The aromas that hit you from the glass are sea spray mixed with lemon zest – also fresh shucked oyster.  It’s a fabulous combination.  The palate is dense and complex with creamy orchard fruits, lemon, minerals and nectarine.  All this is wrapped up with a mouthwatering finish that keeps all these flavours alive.  One of the standout wines of 2020 and at its peak for the next 3-5 years.

  At Brewer Clifton they strive to remove the winemaker’s signature, allowing the voice of the vineyard to be the overriding expression.  Only neutral barrels are employed and they strive for whole cluster fermentation, interestingly the fruit from each vineyard is handled identically from harvest to bottling, allowing the true essence of each site to be expressed.

  They also farm with a focus of ripening the stems of the bunch alongside the fruit, allowing the cluster to be in harmony. Working with the stems allows for wines that are structured, earthy and balanced with the exceptional Santa Rita Hills fruit. The analogy they use is roasting fish or meat on the bone, the bone offers complex flavours very different than taking it off of the bone to cook it.

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