Stonehaven Reserve Chardonnay Padthaway 2025
- 93
- $80
- Drink by: 2025-2033
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Under Diam, this is a most impressive Chardonnay from the Padthaway region. This wine represents the best fruit the team can source from that district. Still very youthful, obviously, the colour is a pale straw. The nose offers appealing notes of stone fruits, nectarines, crushed almonds, river pebbles, hints of dried herbs and oatmeal. A touch of honeycomb on the finish and even hints of crisp pears. A lovely supple texture which should tend to creaminess given time, the wine maintains its intensity on a long and lingering finish. Well balanced, the wine should drink beautifully over the next five to eight years.
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.
