The 2022 Xanadu Margaret River Chardonnay is an elegant yet powerful wine, boasting a striking pale straw color. Its bouquet offers fragrant notes of fresh pears, nectarine, and citrus fruits, with subtle hints of white flowers, oyster shell, and oatmeal. On the palate, this medium-full bodied wine presents ripe stone fruit flavors, a zesty combination of lemon and grapefruit, and a backbone of phenolic tension. The resulting balance is further enhanced by a mouth-watering saline edge and zesty acidity, leading to a crisp, dry, and persistent fruit finish. This modern and sophisticated style of Chardonnay showcases the classic hallmarks of the Margaret River region and can be enjoyed in its youth or with careful cellaring.
"At first, this offers hedonistic pleasure as it’s supple and inviting with layers of flavour deep and rich. It’s savoury and quite plush with lots of texture via cashew-like creamy lees, but it’s also not overworked. It has restraint and detail. There’s a superfine line of acidity keeping all elements in there place, stitching them together harmoniously." 95 Points - Jane Faulkner, Halliday's Wine Companion, 23rd October 2023
After a long, and relatively cold and wet winter bud-burst was later than usual, and about a week or two later than last season. There was still some wet, windy spring weather which affected fruit set. Despite the late start to the season, the fantastic WA summer allowed the growing season to catch up with warm, fine weather and a few of very hot periods. Marri trees had a bumper year for blossom, which always bodes well, distracting birds from away from the fruit (at least for the first half of the season while the blossom lasted). There was no significant weather pressure experienced at all early in the vintage, in fact the warm weather meant that the whites were harvested at a frenetic pace in order to preserve natural acidity. Yields were relatively low however the fruit quality was excellent with great flavour intensity. In summary 2022 will be remembered as an outstanding vintage in Margaret River.
Made entirely from Gingin clone, the fruit was whole bunch pressed and was all barrel fermented in select French oak barriques (22% new oak). Wild fermentation was encouraged on all of the components, in order to introduce more complexity and personality into the wine. All of the individual batches which make up the blend were lees stirred throughout a nine-month oak maturation period, without any malolactic fermentation. The final blend was put together in November 2022.
