Pair our Mt. Beautiful Chardonnay with poached chicken, fresh baked salmon, Coquille St St. Jacques, and a playful perspective about life.

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

Our Chardonnay is planted on the most Northern part of the vineyard and is hand-tended 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 flavour profile of the Chardonnay, so far yielding flavours of peachy stone fruits and creamy almonds. The first vintage was 2013.

Chardonnay Vineyard Stats:
Planted 2004-2011
2 blocks, 6.4 ha (15.8 ac)
154 rows, 17,433 vines
Spacing: @2.4 x 1.65 m

Alcohol 14.4%
TA 6.0 g/L
RS 2.01 g/L
pH 3.31

Bottled: March 2021
Production: 1,000 cases