Mt. Beautiful Chardonnay 2020

With aromatics of ripe apple and white peach, our Chardonnay has a creamy texture that makes it easy to drink. Medium bodied with underlying notes of roasted almonds and nectarine confit, it finishes clean and crisp with a lovely persistent flint like minerality

Our Chardonnay is planted on the most Northern part of the vineyard and is handtended and hand-harvested. The clones are a mixture of French clones B95, 548, UCD15 and UCD1 grafted onto different rootstocks. The vineyard is in charge of dictating the flavor profile of the Chardonnay, so far yielding flavors of peachy stone fruits and creamy almonds. The first vintage was 2013.

2020 was an excellent growing season. It was warm and with adequate moisture we had very good flowering with nice even bunches. Picking was delayed by about 10 days as crop load was higher than usual which slowed down ripening. Harvest was mostly by machine between 7th and 11th April. However the vineyard crew decided vintage was finished on 9th April and went on holiday! The winery crew themselves hand-picked the best fruit from Z block on the 11th April. The machine picked fruit was picked into bins and loaded directly to the press with no crushing or destemming. It was then gently pressed using a cremant cycle. This results in delicate fruit and good palate weight, while minimizing the extraction of undesirable phenolics. Once pressed, the juice settled 36 hours before the clear juice was put (50/50 split) into tank and barrel (new and neutral oak) for fermentation. About half of the barrels went through the malolactic fermentation to soften the acid balance and broaden the palate. Both barrel and tank components were aged on lees for 10 months adding textural elements to the wine to produce a wine that has fine stone fruit characters, creaminess of texture and length.