Midhill Chardonnay 2021

A classic Chardonnay look and feel feel here to this single vineyard Chardonnay and a decent step up from the Macedon Ranges label. It’s immediately complex and expressive but still tightly wound with fine and focussed aromas ranging from grapefruit and pear to exotic fig all well supported by assertive, well integrated oak and lifted by flinty, leesy savoury complexity. Tangy acidity and punchy fruit provide great upfront impact of oyster shell and citrus flavours before building a silky core of flavour that continues over a long, seamless and sustained finish. Super impressive but it would be a shame to enjoy now and miss out on the fireworks it promises in the coming years.

I’m tempted to say that this wine is built on acidity but the flavour itself is wonderful and I don’t want to give the wrong impression. Let’s just say that fruit intensity is excellent and that it’s strung on strict, straight wires. This wine isn’t a telephone line; it’s a high voltage power cable. Yellow stonefruit flavours reach the front porch of green pineapple; sweet pear walks in the direction of honeysuckle. Cedarwood oak is a player and an appropriate one. This wine is complex, intense and lengthy; it’s chardonnay with its gorgeous face on.

Bright lemon to straw yellow in the glass. Grilled pineapple and struck flint aromas. Serious palate intensity that is balanced by a race of acidity. Pineapple and peach notes are layered with oyster shell, struck flint and bacon fat complexities. The epitome of modern Australian chardonnay.

The fruit for the 2021 MidHill Chardonnay is grown at Midhill Winery in the Macedon Ranges, planted in 1993. The vineyard sits up high—550 meters in elevation—and is planted on deep red volcanic soils. The wine is mineral and hard-edged in the mouth, with a pulpy line of fruit that sails across the palate. The acidity is salty and tense, the fruit is soft and faintly tropical and the complexing flint characters take the wine to another level. There are almandine and salted peach flavors on the close. This is cool, pretty and austere, in its way.