Leeuwin Estate Art Series Chardonnay 2018
- 99+
- $126
- Drink by: 2021 - 2038
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This is the closest I have come to awarding a wine 100 points. Tempted briefly. But sorry guys, I’m philosophically opposed to awarding any wine 100 points. So it gets 99-plus. And having been fortunate to have tasted each Art Series chardonnay, most on release, I’m happy to put my neck out and say this is the finest yet released. It’s a wine that shows the continued pursuit to improve on the near perfection of previous vintages which seems to be the Leeuwin mantra.
Stellar wine from a stellar vintage. The remarkable thing is that this is a wine that gets 100% barrel fermented in new French oak barriques with regular lees stirring for 11 months – and it certainly doesn’t taste excessive, or even slightly oaky. It has such hi-fidelity purity with complex seductive aromatics of vanilla bean and light oatmeal with a cutting minerality. But the palate, oh, the palate. This is where things start to explode and go crazy. Power, poise, and persistence with a dry savouriness balancing the intense ripe fruit. It is such a long finish with a slightly, ever so slightly charry touch completing a remarkable wine.
Get it here, while you can.
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.
