Lawson's Dry Hills Chardonnay 2021

This wine offers a range of aromas including lemon zest, red apple and brioche. The palate is elegant with a good concentration of fruit flavours, soft texture and a lovely balance of fresh acidity. This is a beautiful and pure expression of chardonnay highlighting the variety’s natural fruit characters unencumbered by new oak.

2021 was another great chardonnay vintage. Our Chaytors Rd Block escaped the early season frosts and had a reasonable flowering with good fruit set. The result was a small but perfectly formed crop of grapes harvested on the 9th and 10th of March. This blend was 50% Clone 548 with the balance being predominantly old vine Mendoza. There was also a small component from the Wiffen Vineyard.

The bulk of this wine was wild fermented in stainless tanks, although this year we included a larger than normal component of the Mendoza clone fermented in old French barriques (30%). The wine then underwent partial malolactic fermentation, softening the overall acidity. The tank component was lees stirred weekly and all three components spent six months on yeast lees.