Geoff Merrill Reserve Chardonnay 2023

This is a fifty-five McLaren Vale and forty-five Coonawarra blend which comes from careful barrel selection each year. There’s richness here with a mix of stone fruit and roasted cashew characters. It’s had a reasonable hit of new French oak for nine months in a mix of hogsheads and puncheons, and yet the fruit has absorbed and managed it and harnessed it rather well. It’s a slightly older style Chardonnay in many ways, but with that fine, precise acidity, it just brings it forward into the modern domain. Really impressive wine over the next five to six years.