Tolpuddle Vineyard Chardonnay 2019
- 98
- $84
- Drink by: 2021 - 2030
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In just a few years this wonderful wine has emerged as one of Australia’s finest chardonnays. The vineyard is not far from Richmond in Tasmania, and while it’s viticultural history is quite short it has links to the earliest years of European settlement in the region, having been worked originally by one of the Tolpuddle Martyrs who fled England in the early part of the nineteenth century.
Owners Michael Hill Smith and Martin Show bought the place in 2011 with a clear intention to establish a great single vineyard. You could say: job done, but I suspect even greater things await. This is another belter.
Minerally, flinty gun smoke and char merge into the pure and pristine fruit characters on the nose. Then the palate delivers with its deep concentration and highly sustained length. It is textured and strikes a great balance of fruit and oak, having spent nine months in barrel with gentle stirring before taking a short lazy rest on lees. This is a classy exceptional chardonnay sourced from the Coal River Valley.
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.
