Description
This wine seems to us to prove something we’ve pondered off and on: we may make better wines in tougher years. Despite the long, cool, wet, truly challenging ‘oh-please-ripen’ conditions thrown at us in 2022 and 2023, there is more textural richness and suppleness to this vintage’s Yandra, somewhat in the profile of a Montrachet. A winemaking change may have played its role with 50% fermented in terracotta to allow for more suspended lees, and the other 50% in barrel, 30% of it, new. Opening with a lifted, honeysuckle nose that presages a bigger wine than this actually is on the palate. This is a pocket of warm sunshine on an otherwise cool day. Pretty, floral, fine, but still rounded. Would go beautifully with a fresh goats cheese and can be drunk young, as required. 100% Lenswood Chardonnay, handpicked, wild-yeast fermentation, whole bunch pressed 50% to terracotta and 50% to barrel, some bâttonage, 10 months in 30% new French oak, unfiltered and unfined, only 100 dozen made.
