2004 Howard Park Chardonnay Tasting Notes

The 2003 Spring was one of the best starts to a season for quite a few years. A lack of wind and fairly dry sunny condition meant that bud burst and flowering conditions were near to ideal. As the season continued the Summer was dry and fairly cool in the Great Southern allowing the vines to develop fruit with no disease pressure. As Autumn and harvest came about there were a few incidents of rain but this caused few problems.

Much of the fruit used to make this wine was hand picked, it has been found that this is the ideal method of harvest for the style of Chardonnay we seek to make. Hand picking allows only disease free fruit to be picked and the bunches arrive at the winery in pristine condition avoiding any excessive phenolic pick up from the skins.

On arrival at the winery the fruit is gently crushed and immediately pressed. Only free run juice is selected as this is the most elegant and clean juice possible. The juice is seeded for fermentation and then pumped to a mixture of new (60%) and one and two year old (40%) French barrels.

At the completion of fermentation the wine is sulphured to avoid any malolactic fermentation and is racked off its fermentation lees. A small number of barrels are kept on lees and are stirred every week to allow the development of biscuity autolytic characters.

This is an elegant but powerful wine. The nose shows fruit characters of grapefruit, lemon and citrus zest as would be expected from a cool climate Chardonnay. On the palate similar citrus characters are seen but also a lemon blossom flavour is detected, this combines wonderfully with the savory biscuit character from yeast contact and smoky nuttiness from the oak. The finish of the wine is reminiscent of cashews with the tingling grapefruit acidity balancing off the palate.

This wine will enormously reward those that are patient enough to cellar this wine. It will develop wonderful secondary characters after about a year and will drink well for five years.