Chardonnay

The grapes are de-stemmed, crushed and pressed to stainless steel tanks for cold settling overnight. The clarified juice is then racked to a holding tank where we inoculate with a selected yeast strain & nutrients, homogenise the tank, take the juice down to barrel for fermentation.

The 2021 vintage experienced a typical cold Elgin winter, with snow on the high mountain peaks and high winter rainfall, after 5 years of very dry and unusually warm winter conditions. This enabled good vine dormancy. Bud break took place in ideal warm and sunny conditions. Cool weather conditions during December and January slowed down ripening. The late rain helped nourish the soils and more importantly, helped the vine focus on grape ripening rather than foliage growth, resulting in concentrated berries with low pH and lower sugar levels. The net result of the later vintage and very cool weather conditions in 2021, is that the grapes had high natural acidity, achieved steady phenolic ripeness and plenty of intense and concentrated fruit flavours.

After fermentation the wine is topped and left on the lees with regular lees stirring for 9 months. Only partial malolactic fermentation was allowed to occur in order to retain the natural acidity and balance in the wine. The barrels were all French oak 228 litre barrels of which 30% were new the rest were older barrels. The wine was bottled in December 2021.