Kooyong Estate Chardonnay 2025

96 POINTS

Ken Gargett - Winepilot

The Estate’s Faultline and Farrago blocks provided the fruit here, which was subsequently blended. The grapes underwent a gentle whole bunch pressing, directly into French oak barriques and puncheons, with 20% of them new, before fermentation, after which the wine spent eleven months maturing on lees, without bâttonage. Very pale lemon in colour, this is a finely crafted and thoroughly entrancing Chardonnay. We have notes of gentle citrus and stone fruit, peach pits, grapefruit and lemon curd on the nose. There is superbly integrated oak here. The wine walks the tightrope between good intensity and elegance. Serious length through to a bright and fresh finish with satiny tannins, there is such fine balance throughout. Ten years of pleasure ahead, fifteen if you’re patient.

94 POINTS

Campbell Mattinson - The Wine Front

This is pretty direct. It has excellent fruit intensity and length, and there’s no question that it’s complex. But it does come with a piercing element, which was enough for me to shake my head and rattle my teeth aro0und for a bit, before hooking in and doubling down for more. It tastes of peach and hay and cedar and lactose, the latter as whispers at most. There are flint notes too, probably, but they are part of the wine rather than a spin-off of it. The net effect of all this is that the quality is excellent, and easily worthy of a gold medal score. But in drinking terms, I’d leave it alone a while for it to calm its farm a bit. In time it will be terrific.