Nose
Up front peaches, nectarines and cashews. As it opens, it evolves into grapefruits & candied lemons.
Palate
This is an austere wine, stonefruits and citrus in abundance with cashews and honey in support. The French oak adds a layer of vanilla and toasty notes. The oak is beautifully balanced with the fruit and adds a lovely texture to the palate. The cleansing acidity gives this wine structure and a wonderful length on the finish. Cellaring in proper conditions will give more complexity for those who like a bigger richer style.
Growing Conditions
From the summer rainfall & river flooding in the Swan Valley, to the threat of not ripening any of the red grapes in Margaret River, the 2017 vintage will be remembered as one of the most nerve-racking and anxious seasons. It certainly beats all of the last 10 vintages I've seen at Sandalford. Overall, the whole growing season, from Spring through to Summer / Autumn was much cooler than average. There were no heat extremes this year. This delayed the ripening of all varieties by at least 3 -4 weeks than normal. For the whites, the wines have excellent flavour concentration and structure and were harvested with a good natural acid and sugar balance.
Harvest
This wine is from 100 % Estate grown, old vine Chardonnay, which was harvested in late February 2017.
Winemaking
Only the free-run juice was used. Only French oak barriques were used for fermentation (20% new, 30% in 1 year old and the remainder in older barriques). Again we used a combination of traditional wine yeasts, the Saccharomyces species and the non-traditional Torulaspora delbueckii. This mix of yeast has added to the complexity of flavours in the resulting blend. The wine was left 'sur lies' in barrel for 8 months prior to blending, stabilisation, filtration and bottling.
Appearance
Pale lemon.
Food Pairing
This wine is vegan & vegetarian friendly.
