Awards and Accolades

Past Vintages

2014

95 Points - James Halliday, Australian Wine Companion
"From the best vineyard patches (ex a very large portfolio), barrel-fermented/matured in French oak. A vibrant and expressive chardonnay with grapefruit and white peach neatly balanced by each other, and likewise with the oak; the finish is long and fresh."

92 Points - Campbell Mattinson, The Wine Front
"This is more old school than the Old School. It’s nutty and intense, but lengthy. It’s a very good offering. It’s loaded with toast and cream notes but the fruit swishes and sways and expands through the finish. Pineapple, citrus, pear and peach. Explodes in the glass."

From the Winery

Consistently warm temperatures during the spring and summer months resulted in an early start to harvest. A combination of these warm daytime temperatures, cool summer nights and the lack of any heat extremes resulted in near perfect grape ripening.

Parcels of fruit were harvested from individually selected blocks in our Mount Barker vineyards. A mixture of clean and turbid juice was racked into a selection of new and aged oak from several separate cooperages for barrel fermentation. The barrels were monitored over the cool, 12 day fermentation to preserve delicate fruit flavours. The finished wine was left in barrel and stirred regularly for approximately 10 months on the fermentation lees to develop a more textural mouthfeel. The individual barrels were tasted prior to blending and only those that fitted the ‘Styx Gully’ style were selected.