Chardonnay 2021
Tasting Notes
The BoB chardonnay has a nose which shows stone fruit (peach and nectarine) with hints of cashew wrapped up in luscious French oak. We make sure that the wine retains its crisp natural acidity to act as a counterpoint to this richness. All of these components come together to create a sophisticated wine with a rich, flavoursome nose and palate, terrific acidity and wonderful length.
Vintage
Good winter and early spring rains were followed by a generally dry and mild growing season. After the leaner vintages of 2019 and 2020 it was nice to see a return to long term average crop levels. We had a slow and steady ripening period without any excessive heat spikes which has resulted in super varietal fruit intensity and balanced natural acidity.
A Mary Poppins kind of vintage; practically perfect! Joch is always loathe to comment favourably about vintage quality, for fear of jinxing things – he can be superstitious like that, but by the end of harvest, the word ‘exceptional’ was heard to come out of his mouth.
Winemaking
This is a modern style of Chardonnay with great flavour and acidity all in one package. The trick with this wine is to prevent it going through secondary ‘malo’, or malolactic fermentation, so that we keep a lovely fresh natural acidity to frame the white stone fruit and cashew characters and the super French oak.
Once picked and pressed off their skins, the Chardonnay is pumped into oak barrels (30% new oak, the balance one and two-year old hogsheads - which are 500 litres) and fermentation begins naturally. Once ferment is finished the wine then spends about 6 months in oak before bottling.
Other Vintages
Technical Details
Vineyards: Denton's
Picking Date: 1st and 2nd February 2021
Bottling Date: 30th August 2021
Alc/Vol: 13.0%