Murdoch Hill Chardonnay 2023 (6 Bottles), Adelaide Hills

by Fine Wine Cellars

$206.00 GST Included

AUSTRALIA WIDE SHIPPING INCLUDED

Few do Chardonnay better than Michael Downer, and this is another cracker. The lion’s share of the fruit for this year’s Chardonnay comes from Murdoch Hill’s estate vineyards: the home vineyard in Oakbank and the newly acquired 8.5 hectares of vines in Lenswood.

The balance is grown on sites Michael Downer has worked with for years in Lobethal and the Piccadilly Valley. All the sites share some common traits: high elevation, sustainable farming practices, and vines that are over 20 years old.

The top block on the Oakbank property, sitting at a lofty 420 metres, is home to Bernard clone vines and forms the backbone of this year’s blend at 50%. The Lenswood site, at 30%, brings an open and generous fruit profile, providing a lovely contrast to the more linear and tight nature of the high-altitude Piccadilly and Lobethal material that rounds out the blend.

The cool, mild conditions in 2023 meant the fruit was handpicked about two weeks later than the 10-year average. The Oakbank portion was destemmed while the rest of the fruit was pressed as whole bunches. Wild barrel ferments and maturation occurred in puncheons and barriques for 10 months (about 20% new).

To “build the back end” of the wine, Downer let a portion of the wine go through malolactic conversion while all parcels rested on gross lees and some barrels were stirred. He tells us he aimed to make “a salivating, delicious and mineral Chardonnay with great tension and acidity”.

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Description

Murdoch Hill is a family-owned winery captained by talented young winemaker Michael Downer.

Downer splits the range in two: his clean-cut, consistently high-quality ‘Estate’ wines are excellent value and perpetually reliable, and his quirky, adventurous ‘Artisan’ wines which offer an alt-styling and different shades of the region.

With the combination of high-quality Adelaide Hills fruit grown on the family estate and the undoubted talent in the winery, this is a Hills producer on the up and up!

Our family has been farming the fertile soils of the Onkaparinga Valley since 1939 and in this time there have been many cattle grazing, hens laying, potatoes grown, flowers picked and since 1998 we have been passionately caring for our vines, and making great wines.

Our vineyard is located behind the township of Oakbank in the beautiful Adelaide Hills. Producing excellent Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon. There has been a lot of blood sweat and tears along the way.

Now, with 20 vintages under our belt the results speak for themselves. We carefully hand prune, shoot thin, bunch thin, and hand pick to produce the best possible wines that show the unique characters of our place.

Fine Wine Cellars

On the one hand, our role as a merchant of all things wine & spirits could not be simpler. We aim to source the most delicious, the most authentic, and the highest quality products possible from Australia and around the world in order to offer them to our clients. We live or die by how well we perform this task. Of course things are rarely as simple or as easy as they seem. Hunting for wines & spirits is no different. Apart from the months spent travelling, countless days and evenings spent tasting and the outrageous wine expenditure in the name of ‘research’, sourcing quality wine and spirits requires expertise and experience. Understanding the potential of a producer and their products is much more than just a slurp and a spit.

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