2023 Deep Woods Estate Reserve Chardonnay

98 POINTS

Ray Jordan

Let’s cut to the chase. The finest Deep Woods chardonnay yet. It has it all. Great fruit has been harnessed with whole bunch pressing and fermentation in new and seasoned French oak. Further lees stirring has built in texture, contributing to a thoroughly beautiful, refined mouth feel. Opens with stone fruit and savoury light lemon curd aromas. Peels off into a palate that reveals more of a struck match and cracked seashell minerality complementing the outstanding fruit concentration. Super wine.

98 POINTS

James Suckling

The nose is very flashy and mineral-driven with citrus notes of lime zest, gunsmoke and grapefruit rind. The medium-bodied palate has high-tension acidity with an underlying power, showing notes of lemon peel, shortbread and sea salt. A very classy, tightly wound chardonnay that will unravel for years to come. Exceptional.

97 POINTS

Erin Larkin - Wine Advocate

I recently tasted these 2023 Chardonnay wines from Deep Woods off the grid—that is to say that no tasting notes were taken, but the impressions were powerful. The 2023 season was one of the most magnificent vintages in Western Australia for its long, mild and dry outlay of growing days. There was some rain at the very end of the harvest period, which did impact some later-ripening reds, but given the year and how it all played out, this was managed well by most. The 2023 Reserve Chardonnay is a true reflection of the year that birthed it; it is elegant, long, coiled and fine, with a palate of concentrated fruit. Most importantly to us, the drinkers, the wine has presence and impact. The acidity is saturating, glassy and crystalline, the fruit is ripe, powerful and restrained, and the phenolic structure that holds it together does so in a pliable, ductile fashion. This is an excellent wine and a wine that I want to drink.

97 POINTS

Decanter World Wine Awards - Platinum

The epitome of style and finesse, tremoring with white blossom, lemon sherbet, red apple and gently toasted oak and chiselled by a flinty mineral backbone and zesty seam of bright acidity. Very long and precise.

96 POINTS

National Wine Show of Australia

Len Evans Memorial Trophy – White Wine of Show Trophy - Best Chardonnay of Show

96 POINTS

Barry Weinman - Fine Wine Club

This has everything turned up a notch. More depth of fruit, more complexity from the winemaking and more impact from the texturing oak. Here, the citrus has been replaced with the more typical tropical/pineapple acidity. Lees and barrel work add greatly, with minerality and struck match notes really adding to the mix. And there is tremendous length and persistence of flavours. The fruit is primarily from Wilyabrup and spent time in 35% new oak (a combination of barriques, hogs heads and puncheons). A superb wine that deserves to be considered amongst the region’s finest.

95 POINTS

Gary Walsh - The Wine Front

Lime, pink grapefruit, quite a lot of cashew, cinnamon pastry, some cut fennel, a wisp of flinty and smoky things. It has intensity and ripe grapefruity acid cut, something more saline and umami here too, bright and chalky in texture, with lime rind and grip on a finish of excellent length. It has zing and energy, though it really needs a few years in bottle to cool its boots and settle into its groove.