Cape Mentelle Single Site Block 10 Chardonnay 2024
- 97
- $90
- Drink by: 2025-2035
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This is an outstanding Chardonnay and quite frankly one of the very best I’ve ever seen from Cape Mentelle. It comes off Block 10 on the Chapman Brook Vineyard, which is now more than 30 years old. After hand-picking, it was pressed with wild fermentation in oak and then aged for a further 10 months. The result is a wine of quite pretty pure characters with a precision and poise that is most impressive. This was a very warm year, but the earlier ripening Chardonnay has emerged largely unscathed, and this is one of the best examples of what can be achieved from this region. There’s a lovely white peach, grapefruit and citrus character merging with a little chalky acidity on the nose. On the palate, it’s fine and yet there is tremendous intensity harnessed and focused through to the finish, which is incredibly long. A first-rate wine.
Ray Jordan has been writing about wine for more than 40 years. His first articles were published in the early issues of national wine magazine Winestate in the late 1970s when he worked in Sydney as a newspaper correspondent. From 1989 Ray wrote more than 3000 columns as a regular newspaper wine columnist. He currently writes a regular column for the special business publication Business News and is one of the main contributors to national wine platform Wine Pilot. In 2017 Ray co-authored The Way it Was – A History of The Early Days of the Margaret River Wine Industry and previously wrote Wine in the Blood: Australia’s Family Wine Estates, published in Mandarin and English. In 2011 Ray was awarded WA Wine Press Club Jack Mann Memorial Medal for his contribution to the WA wine industry. His love of wine is as strong as his love of the blues and tasting the thousands of wines that cross his bench each year allows him to indulge in both.
