Kerrigan + Berry Margaret River Chardonnay 2021
- 95
- $38
- Drink by: 2022-2028
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Two experienced winemakers, Michael Kerrigan (Hay Shed Hill) and Gavin Berry (West Cape Howe), have worked with the chardonnay grape for probably all of their careers. It shows. There is a rare confidence with the grape on display here. It’s there in the interlocking features of early ripened fruit and texture-building winemaking. Altogether it remains sunny and approachable. A good feat. As chardonnay is picked earlier across Australia – 12% here in the finished K+B product – it brings a wealth of citrus flavours together with an equal quantity of acidity. Winemaking becomes a juggling act to retain that bright acidity, but not allow it to dominate a wine.
In K+B, there are some lovely flavours to embrace: bountiful lemon, grapefruit, with an injection of summer nectarine. The flavours are clean, crisp and, importantly, bring good depth and concentration. Some smooth winemaking, I suspect including barrel fermentation, to polish the edges, and it’s ready to go now. K+B offers a top Margaret River chardonnay from a vintage noted for its unusual amount of rain. As I said, that’s some feat of winemaking.
Jeni Port is one of Australia’s top wine communicators. Based in Melbourne, Jeni created the first wine column in the (then) Sun News-Pictorial before moving over to The Age and becoming that paper’s longest-serving wine writer. Over the years she has written for most Australian wine magazines and these days calls WinePilot home. She is also a Tasting Panel member on the Halliday Wine Companion. She was named Wine Communicator of the Year and Legend of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival in 2014 and in 2018 Legend of the Vine. She is a founding board member of Australian Women In Wine and is the co-deputy chair of Australia’s Wine List of the Year Awards and China’s Wine List of the Year Awards.
