When arguments rage, you can guarantee when the subject is Australia's greatest chardonnays that this wine will always be in the mix. It's another exceptional wine from a vintage that really worked well. As always, 100% of the juice was barrel fermented in new French barriques, with regular stirring to introduce complexity and texture. It's a powerful statement of chardonnay as it always is, with aromas of quince and lime, cut pear, with a little vanilla pod and brioche. So it's layered and complex. The palate is a powerhouse with awesome concentration and intensity, but then there's a minerally lime juice edge that leaves the mouth with a lip-smacking acidity.
97 POINTS
Ken Gargett - Winepilot
This iconic Australian Chardonnay never allows standards to drop and this is yet another stellar effort from the great Chardonnay production line. A shimmering pale lemon, we have notes of spices, lemon curd, ginger, pink grapefruit, lemongrass, florals, peaches, nectarines, jasmine and stone fruits. There is a whiff of smoky oak as well and integration is proceeding well. There is complete balance here, with focus and energy. The wine is still very young and it will certainly be better if you can wait for two or three years before opening. Then enjoy it for a further ten to fifteen years. Juicy, with a supple texture and a long and lingering finish, along which the intensity is maintained for the full journey. A cracker.
97 POINTS
Jane Faulkner - Halliday Wine Companion
If you were sitting quietly in a corner, contemplating the vicissitudes of life, and a glass of this exceptional chardonnay came your way, well, all would be very well indeed. And you’d perk up. It’s a wine that tends to be scintillating in youth, driven by all manner of citrus flavours – lemon, pink grapefruit with a dash of lime but also a mille-feuille of leesy lusciousness, oak spices and a moreish savouriness. It seems powerful and explosive with its acidity, drive and energy yet manages to remain classy and complex.
Another exceptional release for this famed Australian chardonnay. Highly strung and tightly wound with mineral-edged aromas of lemon peel, crushed stones and sea spray as well as grapefruit, struck match and white orchard fruit. The palate is still reserved and quiet—remarkable, considering the 11 months in barrel with biweekly lees-stirring. A wine that always needs time but consistently presents as flashy yet vertical. Excellent. Drink or hold but give it some air beforehand.
97 POINTS
Erin Larkin - Robert Parker Wine Advocate
The 2022 season was warm and low-yielding, particularly for Chardonnay, and many of the wines produced in the region this season can be typified by their nuttiness and a distinct chamomile tea/white flower character. Here, the 2022 Art Series Chardonnay is showing both of those characters, neatly wedged into the authoritative profile of Leeuwin Art Series Chardonnay. Today, for perhaps the first time ever in seeing these wines on release, I note that the oak is a key player in the drinking experience—as ever, seamlessly matched to the fruit and an important part of the wine's style and evident here today. There are toasted nuts, yellow fruits, exotic spices and an open fan of acidity/phenolics through the finish. This 2022 will prove to be a powerful and statuesque player in the wider footprint of Art Series Chardonnays. It's one to collect, but for drinking in the short/immediate term, decanting is recommended. Sealed under screw cap. The wine was scheduled to be released March 9.
97 POINTS
Cassandra Charlick - Decanter
It’s still a baby, but there is no question of what lies within. Tuberose, lemon leaf, green spice, preserved lemon, toasty oak, cracker and perfumed white peach. On the palate, flavour is concentrated and intense, and combined with the firm structure of this wine, powerful enough to hold up to the oak. There’s vibrant, lacy acidity, ripe and powerful Gingin fruit, yet in no way eding towards fleshy. It’s voluminous and complex, but laser-beam precision keeps things taut. The palate blooms with opulent florals, doughnut peach, nectarine skin, lemon blossom, crushed roast cashew, orange blossom and crushed citrus leaf. A silvery salinity on the finish tickles. A wine of polish, precision and immense power, yet all in balance. This is one for the distance.
95 POINTS
Tom Kline - Winepilot
There’s authoritative presence straight off the bat here with a wine that exudes confidence. Rich aromas of nougat, ripe peach, and hazelnut praline lift from the glass before nectarine, dehydrated lime, ginger and grapefruit freshen things up and foil any heft. Cedar wood sits beneath it all as a seasoning, and some sweet peach blossom adds lift while the wine’s nuttiness remains present through it all. The palate is textural, powerful and deep set – ripe peach, grilled nuts, ruby grapefruit, kumquat, preserved lemon, lemon oil. All of this before a firm line of chalk-laced phenolics shapes and frames the back palate to keep it all in line, pulling the preserved lemon and grilled nuts long through the finish. There’s heft and power here, but masterfully controlled structure to balance it.
95 POINTS
Gary Walsh - The Wine Front
This seems, at least to me, to hark back to what might be called a more ‘old school’ classic LEAS style. And that will make many people very happy, no doubt.
Pear, grapefruit, Teddy Bear biscuits, cedar, vanilla, clove and ginger oak laying it on pretty thick, though the fruit power is there to take it. It’s juicy, honey drizzled pear, citrus, a firm chalk dust grip, with a lively grapefruit cut of acidity, some lime and lime rind richness here too, with a bold and savoury finish of excellent length. It’s wine of power and presence, and some warmth, not immediately approachable, but very good.
