Cape Mentelle Chardonnay 2023
- 94
- $60
- Drink by: 2025-2033
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The modern Aussie Chardonnay looks a lot like this – a place where less is more. It’s a fine juggling act and it is performed especially well in this 2023 Margaret River Chardonnay. The bouquet brings gentle toasty oak aromas rather than loud, and stone fruits and citrus sit pretty with a hint of spice. It’s welcoming. Held together tightly, firmly in structure by assertive, sherbet-like acidity it sprints across the palate in juicy citrus fruits, lemon zest, nectarine, white peach, woody spice and light hints of bush herbs and maritime salt bush. It offers more a feel of oak rather than obvious oak, a background component that brings a nice, light textural flow. Good balance throughout.
Jeni Port is one of Australia’s top wine communicators. Based in Melbourne, Jeni created the first wine column in the (then) Sun News-Pictorial before moving over to The Age and becoming that paper’s longest-serving wine writer. Over the years she has written for most Australian wine magazines and these days calls WinePilot home. She is also a Tasting Panel member on the Halliday Wine Companion. She was named Wine Communicator of the Year and Legend of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival in 2014 and in 2018 Legend of the Vine. She is a founding board member of Australian Women In Wine and is the co-deputy chair of Australia’s Wine List of the Year Awards and China’s Wine List of the Year Awards.
