Yangarra Ovitelli Blanc 2024

96 POINTS

Ray Jordan - Winepilot

One of my favourite wines within the entire Yangarra Estate range. It’s a blend of Grenache Gris, Grenache Blanc, Clairette, and Roussanne. Extensive use of ceramic eggs has certainly contributed to the wine and the style, with skin content an important part of the finish and textural makeup. In fact, 48% of the final blend had skin contact. So here’s a wine with phenolic richness, texture, and complexity. Creamy, nutty fruit characters that dominate without oak influence. It’s rich and opulent, yet that fine structural integrity is never compromised, and the fine acid ensures a sustained, long finish.

96 POINTS

Marcus Ellis - Halliday Wine Companion

A different blend this year of 31/28/22/19% grenache gris/grenache blanc/clairette/roussanne. Some batches were direct pressed, others saw up to four months on skins, with all fermentation and maturation in ceramic eggs. This hits different to prior releases, recognisable but just a little dialled up. A little whiff of measured reduction gives an appealing slatey, matchstick note floating like smoke over the golden apple, citron, pineapple quince and Meyer lemon fruit. It’s sunny in a way, an orchard bursting with life, but the textural tension, the layers of phenolic detail and the subtly integrated baking spices take away any notion of this being in any way simple. Rather it is calmly, coolly complex. And it gets better with air – significantly enhanced on day two.

95 POINTS

Shanteh Wale - Winepilot

31% Grenache Gris, 28% Grenache Blanc, 225 Clairette and 18% Roussanne. Matured in ceramic eggs for 7 months. A wine that is showing some richness and fleshy complexity this vintage, but still finishes with the salt brine and seashell we have come to know and love. The additional skin contact is shaping the wine to throw yellow plum, candied lemon and elderflowers with a touch of fennel seed and bee pollen. It has a waxy quality as it slips down the palate and some sesame-like nuttiness too. A brilliant food wine for roasted white flesh meats and root vegetables.

95 POINTS

Erin Larkin - Robert Parker Wine Advocate

The 2024 Ovitelli Blanc is led by Grenache Gris (31%), Grenache Blanc (28%) and Clairette (22%), with the balance Roussanne. The season here was warm and dry, however widespread rains in January positively set the tone for the season. The wine here is perfumed and floral, with mineral/rock-based phenolics that shape the flavors across the palate. Winemaker Pete Fraser credits the heightened aromas here to the increased quantity of Grenache Gris in the blend. A tremendous wine, it is elegant and sophisticated, and the experience is predicated on skin/fruit tannin. Sealed under screw cap.

93 POINTS

Gary Walsh - The Wine Front

This is 31% Grenache Gris, 28% Grenache Blanc, 22% Clairette, 18% Roussanne. Part of the Grenache Blanc and Roussanne (48%)stays in a ceramic egg for four months, the other parts were pressed to ceramic egg. This is a juicy and slippery wine but its fine stony grip keeps it all in check. No shortage of flavour this vintage, offering pear, apple, some more tropical fruit, dried herbs, a spiced preserved lemon tang, balanced acidity with a waxy feel on a finish of excellent length. Good wine. Rhone blanc fanciers will, well, fancy it.