Xanadu Chardonnay 2024
- 95
- $40
- Drink by: 2026-2036
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It still strikes me as remarkable that a wine of this quality from Xanadu can be so inexpensive. I mean, this is a super classy wine that is a combination of largely Walcliff fruit with about 11% from Willibera, adding that deep concentration into the palate. The fruit was all whole bunch pressed and barrel-fermented in French oak, of which about a quarter was new. The nose shows the citrusy, nectarine, and slightly kumquat-like characters, with a little spicy lift. It’s more in the medium-bodied zone, with a mix of citrus and grapefruit, with a crunchy, pebbly minerality contributing to its fine linear expression and its supreme focus. Despite the warmth of the year, this turned out to be pretty good for Chardonnay, and this is another excellent example.
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.
