Paringa Estate Chardonnay 2008 from the cool region of Red Hill in Mornington Peninsula in Victoria, Australia is a wine with character. It has punchy aromas of tropical fruits and spice, it comes from the warmer 2008 vintage and the tropical elements may be attributed to this.
There is a silky texture on the palate which has apple, melon with a hint of pithy grapefruit especially on the finish, the vanilla and spice intermingle comfortably and there is a developed character which adds butterscotch and honey to the fray - though the wine is dry. The acidity is freshening and the alcohol feels bang on. This beautifully textured wine has a long length with spicey peaches at the end, warm and rich. The wine making included - 100% destemmed and cold soaked for 1-2 days. Each fermenter was hand plunged 3 times per day. Several days of post-ferment maceration then pressed to tank (1 day) and barrel for malolactic. 50% was aged in new French oak barriques and 50% in 1st and 2nd use barrels for 10 months.
Score : 84 and it is available from Swig at £36.
The Mornington Peninsula wine region lies to the South East of Melbourne and is bounded by Port Phillip and Westernport Bays and so has a true maritime climate which modifies the temperature range and provides relatively high summer humidity hence vine stress is low, sunshine hours are abundant, and rainfall is plentiful during winter and spring, a great growing enviroment.
It also leads to late ripening, a prolonged gentle autumn leads to fully ripe grapes with outstanding fruit flavours, high natural acidity and fine tannins. This is perfect for Chardonnay, but over the last century many have tried to grow grapes here without little success as matching the variety to climate is never more important than here. Here the average vine age is 15 - 20 years. The soil on all 3 vineyards is deep red volcanic clay that allows dry land growing (no irrigation).
About the Paringa Estate
The Paringa
Estate was founded in 1984 by Lindsay McCall when he purchased a derelict
orchard in 1984 on Paringa Road, Red Hill South. Lindsay continued his day job
of teaching while he set about planting the first vines in 1985 - the first vintage
was in 1988 and was just a mere 3 tonnes
In 1996, Lindsay gave up teaching to focus entirely on Paringa Estate
and making great wines. Twenty-five years on the production is now 200 tonnes
and Paringa Estate is one of the most highly awarded wineries in Australia
regularly winning gold trophies for their Shiraz, Pinot Noirs and Chardonnay.
Lindsay believes that great wine is made in the vineyard. After struggling with vine vigour in the early years and discovering that the vines needed room to find their natural balance, he implemented the rarely seen Lyre trellis system. Each vine is split horizontally resulting in two parallel canopies allowing maximum light exposure to both fruit and leaves. The quality of fruit that this produces is second to none.
When it comes to winemaking Lindsay’s
philosophy is fairly basic – the aim is to preserve the unique fruit qualities
of each variety and allow the wines to express the individual ‘terroir’ of
Paringa Estate. The wine processed in small batches -
plunging and management of the ferments is all done by hand and most recently,
Lindsay has been experimenting with natural yeasts.
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