Fraser Gallop Estate 2009 Chardonnay

This focus of this wine is to emphasise secondary characters over primary fruit flavours through the use techniques such as barrel fermentation, wild yeast, time on lees and battonage. The dry-grown fruit has the concentration of flavours to carry the complex characteristics while maintaining restraint and elegance. It is a wine that is made to drink with food and has the complexity and structure to match a number of different cuisines.

Winemaker's Notes

Vintage 2009
The 2009 vintage was another great one for Margaret River. A wet spring gave good soil moisture for the vines to draw on throughout the growing season and a cool start to summer allowed for a long, slow ripening process giving great flavour development across all varieties. The weather warmed up towards the end of December but still remained moderate with temperatures rarely exceeding 32°C allowing vines to steadily ripen the fruit under optimum conditions resulting in excellent fruit flavours, good acid levels and ripe tannins in the reds.

Winemaking Notes
Once hand harvested, the fruit was transferred directly to cool rooms and chilled to 8°C overnight. The bunches were gently whole bunch pressed. This allowed us to only extract the juice from the fleshy interior of the berries and not the juice next to the skin, thereby minimising phenolic (tannic) pick up and resulting in a juice with exquisite seamless structure. The chardonnay juice was then transferred to a stainless steel tank, where it was chilled and settled for 24 hours before racking to French barriques, of which one third were new. Fermentation was initiated by wild yeast from the vineyard and then the barrels were transferred to the cool room and the temperature was kept below 20°C to retain primary fruit characters. After fermentation the barrels were stirred weekly for a month, this resulted in a creamy mouth feel to complement the linear acid structure of the wine. The wine spent eight months in barrel before being blended and bottled.

Colour

Vibrant light straw in colour.

Nose

The nose is dominated by more complex and savoury aromas of lanolin, sour dough and spice notes supported by hints of lemon curd and dried orange peel.

Palate

Initially the palate has a distinct waxy creamy texture with flavours of custard apple, almond milk and honeysuckle. The mid palate shows some nuttiness with a wet slate and a flinty texture, which follows through to a citrusy acid finish.

Cellaring

Will age gracefully over the next 5 to 10 years.