IN THE VINEYARD….This is a larger commercial operation sitting on the foothills of my favourite hills in the state – Leangnaook! The proudest and most prominent outcrop of the Harcourt Granodiorite which dominates our local landscrape and provides some of the best vineyard sites in our region, maybe even state! An east-west oriented planting in the lower foothills of the mount, farmed by Garth Doolan, in deep sandy granitic soils. An under looked area that we see huge potential in and a bright future for organic viticulture. Our Metcalfe vineyards have their feet in same soils. This site is not organic and run fairly conventionally but consistently produces fruit of great concentration and aroma. Sitting at around 450 metres above sea level this is about as Macedon as Bendigo can get. Big acid always at this site!

IN THE WINERY….Hand picked fruit split across two picking days for flavour/acid balance. The earliest pick, around 80% of this wine, was gentle pressed as whole bunches, with a press cut targeting the most pristine juice extraction. This juice was chilled and fermented in barrel and aged on full solids over winter in seasoned puncheons. The later pick, 1 week later, was destemmed and macerated for 4 hours on skins, yielding a gentle phenolic extraction and some deeper flavours in the glass. This pick was pressed off skins and fermented in tank before being racked off gross lees and moved to barrel for maturation and secondary ferment. Post malo and in early summer the wines were gravity racked from barrel and blended to tank with a small sulphur add prior to bottling in early February. All native yeasts, old oak, no fining or filtration or adjustment. 

IN THE GLASS…. Pale straw coloured with lemon, lemongrass and green apple aromatics. The palate is bright and clean with a mealy, chalky texture and a concentration of fruit with subtle white peach and blossom. This is a great modern Chardonnay that is driven by chalky minerality and citrus. 

Wild Yeast - Unfiltered - Unadjusted - Low Sulphur