Chardonnay Coal River Valley, Tolpuddle Vineyard 2025

Tight and intricately detailed, as always, with bright citrus, peach and white nectarine fruits overseen by a mist of flint and struck-march complexity. Hints of grilled hazelnuts, almond butter, vanillin oak, clover blossom, crushed riverstone, crème fraîche, ozone, oatmeal and sea spray. Lightly textural, with a beautiful taut mineral line, the flavours precise and drawn out along its length. This has a tight mineral cadence, a touch of apple-skin pithiness, preserved lemon, nougat and a pristine, sustained finish with a flair of umami. This is a producer and a site that is in the finest of form. No wonder the French are nervous – once again, world-class Australian chardonnay.

A good winter of rain in 2025, on the long-term average, set things up well; warmish flowering brought a strong fruit set, well-timed rain worked its magic through the Coal River Valley, and a mild summer followed – overall cooler than 2024 on the data, delivering good yields and quality. This is a wine that has, since Tolpuddle's first release in 2013, become one of the benchmarks for Australian Chardonnay – taut, mineral, and precise in a way few sites in the country can match. There's such allure to the perfume as the wine relaxes in the glass. Cashew cream and white flowers hover above pure and precise fruit – white peach, salted grapefruit, preserved lemon, makrut lime. There's some saline oyster shell minerality and whispers of fine cedar bringing savoury complexity. The trademark flinty reduction permeates but not aggressively at this stage of the wine's life. On the palate, there's both power and precision with a lovely creamy texture cut up by tensile saline acidity and chalky phenolic drive. The fruit notes mirror the nose, carried very long with that classic Tolpuddle crystalline drive and some preserved lemon brininess drenching the close with salinity. Top flight Tolpuddle Chardonnay here. Power and precision in equal measure, and a balance that will see it age brilliantly.