LVDO Forreston Chardonnay 2024

Ingredients: Grapes, 30 ppm sulphites

Vegan, unfined and unfiltered.

13% ABV
750 mL

Grape: Chardonnay

Vintage: 2024

Vineyard: Lansdowne Vineyard, Forreston, Adelaide Hills

Planted: 2005

Elevation: 420 m

Production: 414 bottles

This might just be the very last single vintage LVDO Chardonnay, so I better make it count I thought... More details on this in a year’s time. But as for the 2024 Forreston Chardonnay, my purpose was to fill an important void in the Australian Chardonnay landscape; a savoury, textural, salty white harnessed with controlled and complexing oxydation. A style that immediately makes you think of topped up Jura or avantgarde Burgs. An ode to what Chardonnay could also be in the sea of uniformly flinty and reductive wines from all around the country. Rebellious? Maybe. But I’d rather call it imaginative.

Winemaking: I10V1 and Entav 548 clones were hand-harvested in four passes. Mostly pressed dirrectly, except for one batch that was destemmed and macerated for 3 hours. The freshly pressed must settled for 2 days and was racked into tanks and an old French puncheon for barrel fermentation. Aged on fine lees for 18 months without racking. After carefully assembling the blend, the wine rested in tank for 1 month and was bottled with 30 ppm SO2.

95 pts, Ryan Montgomery, jamessuckling.com

“Made in a Jura style with real precision and class. Aromas of white orchard fruit, grilled lemons, lanolin, salted nuts, sea spray and olive brine. The palate is textural and rounded, with a fine phenolic grip, long acidity and nuanced notes of yeast and grilled citrus. This is very delicious, a nod to an oxidative style with a saline and minerally finish. Drink or hold.”