Wynns Black Label Messenger Chardonnay 2025
- 94
- $45
- Drink by: 2026-2032
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It’s hardly surprising that in good years, like 2025, Chardonnay in Coonawarra can perform exceptionally well. There’s a pure, pristine quality about the wine from the moment you take in the heady aromas of lemon curd, grapefruit, and that nectar and stone fruit, with just a faint touch of cashew. The palate has quite a bracing feel about it, but there is good flesh, with those stone fruit complexities and a creamy richness. It’s had nine months in oak, 28% of which was new French, and it was a mix of hogsheads and barriques. So the oak has been impeccably handled to highlight the fruit qualities. This is a mighty impressive wine.
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.
