"The aim here is to reveal just what the very best fruit from the team’s Kuitpo Vineyard in the Adelaide Hills can offer. This wine has the advantage of coming from the very fine 2022 vintage and the fruit is from the original plantings in their vineyard. Fermentation was in French oak barriques. Yellow/green in hue, there is a most attractive nose with hints of stone fruit, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon curd and mandarins. Gentle hints of apricot skins lurk in the background. Balance is exemplary and the oak has integrated exactly as the team must have wished it would. The wine is fresh, offering exciting energy and good intensity. It is well balanced and has a long, lingering finish. The seductive texture will blow away lovers of top-notch Chardy. Enjoy this over the next ten to twelve years. Love it. 95pts" (Ken Gargett, WinePIlot). "It’s a wine like this that reminds us why appreciating the aromas is so important,…" writes John Lehmann in The Australian, "… because the sheer complexity – think oak, vanilla, cedar, lemon, straw and nuttiness – then makes the first sip even more powerful. The palate duly delivers, full of intense fruit, ripe mandarin, creamy vanilla and nougat and beautifully balanced by the acidity." Geoff Hardy’s great-great-grandfather, the original Thomas Hardy, first planted grapes in SA in the 1850s and was one of the founding fathers of the Australian wine industry. Geoff and his partner Fiona purchased an old dairy farm in the Kuitpo area of the southern Adelaide Hills in 1986 and planted out the first vineyard in the Kuitpo region.

As a young winemaker travelling the globe, the 'Old World' Chardonnay that Ben Riggs fell in love with in the 1980's were described as 'like drinking cold chalk soup', and have inspired him to make this beloved Adelaide Hills Chadonnay. Over the years Ben has been searching for the perfect cold site to make a dry Chardonnay renowned for the purity of its aroma and taste.

Tim Knappstein brings six decades of Adelaide Hills expertise to the Riposte Morningstar Chardonnay. Sourced from cool-climate, high-altitude vineyards, whole-berry fruit ferments in French oak barriques with extended yeast lees maturation. The palate balances focused grapefruit and nectarine fruit against subtle nougat oak and a creamy mid-palate. Crisp natural acidity gives the wine drive and poise, delivering the distinction of benchmark Adelaide Hills Chardonnay at accessible value. It drinks brilliantly now and will reward cellaring over the next three to five years.

A fine-boned Chardonnay that reflects vintage conditions and the character of a unique vineyard site purchased by Shaw + Smith in 2012. Inaugural vintage: 2014. Planted in 1999, the vineyard has east and west facing aspects and reaches 500 meters above sea level. The soil is brown loam over clay with some broken shale and stone on the ridges. The wine is100% hand-picked and whole-bunch pressed, then fermented and matured on lees in 500-litre French oak puncheons (30% new) for 9 months.

Modern Chardonnay with new season stone fruit, citrus notes and exeptional minerality with balanced integrated oak.

Fruit for the 2022 Tilbury was sourced from the Lenswood Vineyard (80%) with the balance coming from the usual Piccadilly and Lobethal growers that have previously contributed to this wine. The style of the fruit from the Lenswood site is more open and generous, providing a beautiful contrast to the linear and tight nature of the Piccadilly and Lobethal material. Its fruit is from own-rooted I10v1 clone vines planted in 1989 and Bernard 76 and 95 clones planted in the early 2000s. The Lobethal site is close to 500m of elevation and has soils that are loaded with ironstone, contributing fruit with a classic flinty expression and powerful drive. The Piccadilly soils are varied, with sandstone, sandy loam and ironstone. The fruit was hand-harvested and whole-bunch pressed into French puncheons, barriques and some Stockinger vessels for fermentation (about 40% new wood this year). The wine went through full malo and had some light lees stirring over eight months maturation.