Giant Steps Yarra Valley Chardonnay 2022 (Australia)

Giant Steps Yarra Valley Chardonnay 2022 (Australia)"An even split of upper and lower Yarra fruit. Whole bunched pressed and wild fermented in 15% new French puncheons. Around 5% mlf. A light, bright green gold. Pure fruited with an attractive nose of just ripened orchard and stone fruits, pink grapefruit and orange blossom. A hint of matchstick and just baked ginger snaps. Concentrated and lithe at the same time, Giant Steps calling card is just as good, if not better than the super 2021 release"

"An even split of upper and lower Yarra fruit. Whole-bunched pressed and wild fermented in 15% new French puncheons. Around 5% mlf. A light, bright green gold. Pure fruited with an attractive nose of just ripened orchard and stone fruits, pink grapefruit and orange blossom. A hint of matchstick and just-baked ginger snaps. Concentrated and lithe at the same time, Giant Step’s calling card is just as good, if not better than the super 2021 release" James Halliday Wine Companion

"A blend of the individual vineyard releases – Sexton, Tarraford, Applejack, Primavera and Wombat Creek – with a little more input besides. It gets “the Rolls Royce treatment” and then it’s blended to become this. Grilled almonds and peaches with wet stones and runs of citrus. Beautiful (creamy) texture, flavour and composure. The elegance of this, the exotic wet stone notes, the smoky push on the finish. It’s all pretty much into wow territory. This is a gorgeous release, essence of chardonnay, scores schmores, buy and drink" Campbell Mattinson, The Wine Front

2022 was a high quality but low yielding season in the Yarra Valley. A very cool, wet and stormy spring resulted in some challenging conditions around flowering and hence very poor fruit set. The season proceeded to dry out into December, with a dry and warm Christmas period. This exacerbated the already small bunch weights, leading to bunches that weighed up to 40% lower than normal years. The mild summer meant long, slow ripening and flavour concentration throughout summer, with some well-placed rain in January refreshing the vineyards at just the right time. The strong canopies and low fruit load meant we sailed neatly into picking with very little disease or weather pressure affecting our picking decisions. The grapes from 2022 came off the vine with lovely concentration and flavour and great natural acidity.

The Chardonnay grapes are chilled overnight before they are whole bunch pressed the following morning. The juice is immediately transferred into 500L French oak puncheons. 15% of the oak is new, while the remaining 85% is seasoned. The juice is fermented naturally using indigenous yeast over 10 days, finishing with lots of stirring at the end of ferment. Around 10% of the batches go through malolactic fermentation. The wines are then sulphured and kept on lees in barrel until October, when they are blended and bottled.