2023 Wildberry Estate Reserve Chardonnay

Variety: Chardonnay 100%
Region: Margaret River 100%
Sub Region: Karridale
Cellaring Potential: This wine is drinking beautifully now and will reward cellaring over the next 5-7 years.
Colour: Pale Gold
Bouquet: Our Reserve Chardonnay has a bright and lifted nose of sweet pastry, lemon curd and fleshy white stonefruit.
Palate: The palate displays a rich and layered mix of fresh
stonefruit, citrus and intense vanilla bean flavours. A fine
mineral thread ensures a wine of length and persistence.

Viticulture

The vineyard is planted on Karri loam gravel soils with underlying laterite. Vine rows run north /south down a moderate north facing slope and are clone GinGin with trellis structured to vertical shoot positioning. The vineyard is subject to the cool Southern Ocean breezes and ripens slowly, evenly and with naturally high acidity.

Winemaking

The fruit is handpicked then cooled before whole bunch pressing. New and seasoned barrels are filled directly from the press to enhance complexity. Only the free run fraction is reserved with harder pressings separated to ensure a delicate and fine expression of the fruit in this wine.

The juice is left to ferment spontaneously and can take up to three weeks to ferment with some cooling at the height of ferment. After ferment the barrels are topped and gently stirred with inert gas protection monthly.

A small number of barrels were encouraged to finish malolactic fermentation to ameliorate the natural acidity. After nine months in barrel the wine is assembled in tank and aged on lees to further encourage complexity.

Alc:% 12.6
pH: 3.15
TA: 8.03g/l
LRS: Dry