Howard Park Petit Jeté NV
- 93
- $33
- Drink by: 2025-2030
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The aim of this impressive West Aussie sparkler is to offer freshness and elegance and that is certainly how this wine drinks. The fruit comes from the cooler parts of Pemberton and Mount Barker. The wine spends twenty months on lees, is 100% Chardonnay and has a dosage of just three grams. The team is building a program of reserve wines. At the moment, this wine enjoys a perpetual reserve of 5%, but they will grow this to 10% down the track. The base for this wine is the 2023 vintage. Pale in colour, this is lean and fresh with hints of garden greens, sea breezes, spices, apples and freshly picked pears. There is good balance and intensity running the length and we see hints of citrus and grapefruit emerge towards the finish. Well focused, expect this wine to continue to impress over the next three to five years. Certainly, an aperitif style, but it would make an excellent pick-me-up at any time of the day.
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.
