Mt Difficulty Lowburn Valley, McFelin Ridge,
Chardonnay 2018
Tasting Notes
The riper characters of McFelin Ridge come through with stonefruit and ripe red apple notes sitting amongst freshly baked sourdough bread aromas with a touch of salinity. The wine opens with supple, textural nectarine followed by red apples. A lovely, lithe line of acid drives the palate, but never dominates. Fine ripe phenolics envelope the wines acidity. Lovely linearity and poise.
CELLARING POTENTIAL
Mt Difficulty McFelin Ridge Chardonnay will improve for 8 -12 years given optimal vintage and cellaring conditions.
Vintage Notes
VINTAGE 2018
2018 was a vintage of two halves. There was exceptional warmth from September through to late January, before a cool February and autumn. With the warm start we got underway early, and the potential crop was well set, yet small. Temperatures plummeted to below average in February and rainfall was well above average through harvest. Fortunately disease pressure remained low through the finish of the season, and the berry- ripening through the cooler summer-autumn period provided ripe, fresh characters.
WINEMAKING CONSIDERATIONS
The fruit was hand-picked at peak ripeness on the 12th of March. The fruit was destemmed to tank, stirred, then dropped to barrel with full solids. We fermented 100% of the juice in barrel with full solids using indigenous yeasts. 18% new French oak was used for the wine’s maturation. Whilst maturing no lees stirring was utilised. The wine went through a partial (65%) malolactic fermentation. The wine was racked from barrel and filtered before being bottled, unfined, in March 2019.
Alc. 13.4% T/A 5.8gL-1 pH 3.38 Residual Sugar <1 gL-1
