2019 Toolangi Pauls Lane Chardonnay

96 POINTS

James Halliday - Halliday Wine Companion

24yo vines, I10V3 and Gingin clones, crushed and pressed with juice solids to French barriques (20% new). Again the drive is exceptional, the fruit range the classic cool-grown duo of grapefruit and white peach.

95 POINTS

Nick Butler - The Real Review

Pale, youthful yellow colour. Sulfides are clean and clear, just-ripe lemons and cashews, soft, spicy oak. It's a wine of precision and drive - an ethereal, minerally glide on the mid-palate ahead of piercing lemon flesh acidity. It's beautifully put together and oozing class.

95 POINTS

Campbell Mattinson - The Wine Front

GW has already reviewed this wine but it’s been re-sent and my impression is sufficiently different, in points terms, to warrant a separate review. Plenty of struck match but these characters come attached to a significant amount of fruit flavour. White peach, candied citrus, chalk, steel and nectarine. It’s a smokin’ wine. Straight, direct and wild at once. Length is superb, so too power, so too style.

92 POINTS

Gary Walsh - The Wine Front

CM rated the 2018 Pauls Lane Chardonnay 96 points, and for me, tasted blind as wine number 8 in the first bracket of the mighty (real) JH Chardonnay Challenge of 2019, I gave it a more modest 93 points. In large part, reading my notes, it’s most likely a question of stylistic preference. Anyway, on with a new vintage. Let’s see. It’s certainly not the sulphide bomb that 2018 was… Clean, direct, stonefruit and aniseed, cashew and a touch of spice. Mid-weight, crisp and fresh, a subtle lemon accent and tang, flint and crunch, a bit of savoury and nutty action through a brisk and refreshing finish. Good. More to come.