Heritage Estate 2017 Single Vineyard Reserve Chardonnay

A lovely light gold straw in colour, a quite powerful and enticing bouquet fills the glass , spend some time with the bouquet of this wine as it’s strongly fragrant assemblage will reward your palate experience. Upwardly transported drifts of grapefruit, stone fruits both peaches and nectarines are tangled around mandarins with a little lemony citrus and some French oak notes.

The palate is long and creamy smooth, almost glycerol like this allows the wine to glide over your palate with mostly soft caresses initially but it then delivers some truly enjoyable fruit experiences as your palate suddenly realises there is a lot more here to encounter. Quite true to the bouquet’s promise you will be greeted by grapefruit and stone fruits, a mostly lemon citrus flavour with some lime very late on the palate, there is also a non-bitter apricot presence and an underlying bed of minerality. A line of acidity runs through the wine and delivers a prolonged and lingering zealous delight, a wine that is quite reluctant to say goodbye and a similar sentiment returned, I’m sure by all who encounter her.

Some 2017 red wines had difficulty on The Granite Belt due to the remnants of Cyclone Debbie but whites picked earlier and before the deluge suggest 2017 was a fine vintage, certainly for Chardonnay. The wild ferment for this wine has produced exactly what a winemaker would be hoping for, another great decision and result for John Handy. This wine is drinking outstanding now but will age gracefully, so no rush to consume.

Tasted: Monday 27th July, 2020 without food and then with over several hours.
Alcohol: 13%
Closure: Screwcap
Price: $35
Suggested Drinking Window: now to 2027
Winemaker: John Handy
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Posted by Peter Pacey

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