Holm Oak The Wizard Chardonnay 2024
- 95
- $64
- Drink by: 2025-2035
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2024 was an excellent vintage in Tasmania, certainly warmer than the preceding year. The juice underwent a wild fermentation in barrel, before half underwent malolactic fermentation. Maturation was in French oak, 50% of it new, for ten months. Gleaming pale lemon, the nose exhibits some spicy oak notes, but integration is proceeding well. Expect the wine to look even better in two to three years. We have notes of cashews, nutmeg, cinnamon, peaches, pears and glacéd lemon. Good concentration throughout, the wine is well balanced with impressive intensity and serious length. Suffice to say, that the length and the way the wine maintains its intensity over the journey is one of the highlights of what is a cracking Chardonnay. This is a ten year proposition. Love it.
Ken was born and bred in Brisbane, Queensland. He had a non-trendy, perfectly happy childhood, in a family convinced alcohol meant instant condemnation to Hades. But a break fishing on the Great Barrier Reef, and some good wine, started a serious obsession that eventually took over. It did not stop Ken being chastised later for drinking Pol champagne, disgusted he’d drink anything made by a Cambodian dictator. Now, Ken mostly writes on wine, champagne and spirits for various newspapers, magazines and books, but is perhaps best known for his work in The Courier Mail. He also has a little sideline writing on cigars, fishing, travel and food. When not writing, fly-fishing for trout in NZ or bonefish on the flats of Cuba, travelling or smoking cigars, he is no doubt following a variety of sporting teams – the occasionally glorious Queensland Reds rugby, the dysfunctional Washington Redskins, the dodgy Arsenal and especially revels in the world restored to its proper axis with the return of the Ashes to their rightful home.
