Pike & Joyce The Kay Reserve Chardonnay 2023
- 95
- $75
- Drink by: 2025-2035
Share
This was a vintage that presented some challenges, but careful management in the vineyard has allowed some quality fruit to be produced. It was a very late vintage, too, so there are some nice flavour build-ups evident. After hand-picking a combination of whole bunch and de-stemmed fruit, followed by wild juice fermentation, with what’s become a house style of juice solids inclusion has influenced the style of the wine. Typically, only a small amount of malolactic fermentation is used, and then the best barrels are selected for the final blend. It’s a wine that shows slightly more winemaking influence than the Sirocco Chardonnay, with slightly more struck match and oak influence evident, certainly on the nose. There are nuances of Chardonnay grapefruit and a pithy lemon brioche that add complexity. The palate has a crispy, creamy character with slightly roasted cashew and nutty nuances offsetting. It flows effortlessly through to the finish and is both powerful and elegantly structured. It is an outstanding wine that typifies the style coming from Pike and Joyce these days.
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.
