Chain of Ponds Reserve Adelaide Hills Chardonnay 2025
- 91
- $35
- Drink by: 2025-2031
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This is a pretty tidy young Chardonnay that shows some reasonably sophisticated winemaking. The ferment was a mix of wild and cultured yeasts, with just a little malolactic fermentation to add creaminess and balance to the palate. It went into French oak puncheons and some hogsheads, and eight months on lees has added important palate richness and complexity. It all sits snugly together, with pure, minerally vibrancy on the palate a feature. It’s still reasonably tight at the minute, and an extra year or two should see it at its best.
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.
