Yattarna Chardonnay, Penfolds 2022

The 2022 Yattarna Chardonnay comprises fruit from Tumbarumba (61%), Tasmania (particularly Coal River Valley, 26%) and the balance from the Adelaide Hills. This wine ages slowly and gracefully, and I love it for that. The phenolics frame a powerful core of fruit that is at once streamlined and wide. It blankets the mouth and persists long after the wine is gone. At this stage, it feels inchoate in its development: tiny fish hooks of texture and a frisky sort of acid line both indicate that the wine has some time to go before it fully realizes its potential. This is forever the blue-chip investment in this collection for my taste, and there is a perpetually seamless cohesion of malolactic fermentation into the wine. The Yattarna is fully inoculated with estate-developed yeast strains, built in conjunction over time with the AWRI. It has 12.5% alcohol, a pH of 3.11 and 6.8 grams per liter of total acidity, and it matured for eight months in French barriques (44% new).

There is a cooler aura to this, perhaps, than the other chardonnays. Spruce, nettle and lemon curd to camembert on the nose, shifting gears to stone fruit references and a glimpse of praline, cashew, pistachio and nougat at the core. A mid-weighted wine that wields an orb of reductive tension across a compact, immensely concentrated mid-palate, paradoxically giving an impression of calmness and levity. An excellent Yattarna. Drinkable now, but best from 2025.

This has always been quite a mix. In cool 2022 with sufficient rainfall it was 61% Tumbarumba, 26% Tasmania, 13% Adelaide Hills. Peter Gago said, ‘Tumbarumba (picked late March) has bounced back to the detriment of Tasmania (picked mid April).’ Eight months in French oak barriques (44% new).Very tight and a little smoky. (Gago would choose to drink the 2008 or 2011 now, but his favourite is 2018.) Racy lime juice. Sleek and satin-textured with some dry herbal elements on the end. No more than medium weight with firm acidity. Very tense and youthful. (JR)