2018 Vanguardist Chardonnay
Adelaide Hills, SA
Austere, structured, detailed yet thrilling Hills Chardonnay from Michael Corbett.
$50.00
Out of Stock
More intellectual than visceral, but very good.
Gary Walsh (The Wine Front)
About The Wine
This is an exquisite example of a leaner modern style of Australian Chardonnay.
Winemaker Michael Corbett has sought out a site in the Adelaide Hills that can produce a taut, mineral-charged example of Chardonnay with plenty of flavour.
Where some Chardonnays picked early like this lack flavour and complexity, this has both in spades.
If you like your Chardonnay in a more lithe frame, this will be right up your alley.
Only 170 dozen made.
About Vanguardist
Vanguardist is an up and coming producer from McLaren Vale started by three friends after many long nights in Hawkes Bay talking about their shared love of wine.
Their mission is to bring premium, authentic, small-batch wines to a market they see as crowded by "overly commercialised wines produced by corporates who take up all the elbow room."
They source very high-quality fruit from great vineyards across South Australia, looking to build wines with texture and vibrancy.
With experienced winemaker Michael Corbett at the helm, the future looks bright for this plucky challenger brand.
Photo Credit: Brad Fleet
From The Producer
Hand harvesting and subsequent foot crushing in the vineyard continues to be one of our favourite techniques. This ‘controlled skin contact’ happens before your eyes in the picking bins.
It requires the fruit to be in near perfect condition as there is nowhere to hide, without the use of sulphur or other preservatives at this stage.
The juice will undoubtedly brown due to all of the exposure to air, but during this phase there is a real build-up of phenolics, all the good flavour and tannin molecules. After around 6 hours the fruit was “whole bunch pressed” to tank and then rough racked after about 12 hours. The juice was allowed to start a natural ferment in tank before being transferred to a combination of 22HL Slavonian Oak foudre, and old barriques. The wine underwent elevage on full lees in oak for around eleven months prior to racking and going to bottle without fining or filtration.
Blend : Chardonnay (100%)
ABV : 12.2%
Closure : Cork
Drink Until : 2027
Production : 170 dozen
Photo Credit: Daniel Purvis
Critic Reviews
"Lemon, spice, fennel, lemon zest. This is tight, lean and ripe lemony, firm flinty texture, a lot of nerve and energy, but with a gentle creaminess to offset. Length is very good, all lemon rind, ginger and nuts. More intellectual than visceral, but very good. Better again with a year or two in bottle." - Gary Walsh (The Wine Front)
"This delicious light to mid-weighted chardonnay bursts with licks of oatmeal, peach and curd, rummaging along rails of juicy natural acidity and cedar. A combination of whole-bunch pressed and foot-crushed fruit, fermented wild in 2200l foudre with controlled oxidation the key to the wine's detailed complexity." - Ned Goodwin MW (Halliday Wine Companion)
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