Sunday, December 19, 2010

Barratt Piccadilly Valley Adelaide Hills Chardonnay 2009


I like being surprised. I was at St Judes Cellars a few weeks ago having a chat to Sean behind the jump, and we were talking about the resurgence of chardonnay. Did you know that for the first time in yonks, chardonnay has eclipsed sales of savvy b in Australia (going off first half of the year sales from Vintage Cellars); that’s pretty huge!

Now I’ve always been a chardonnay fan; never understood the ABC set – anything but chardonnay. All you need to do is go through my blog and seethe praise I fork out to such players like Bindi, Giaconda, By Farr and Oakridge to name a few.

So, like I said, I was having a wee chat with Sean at St Judes about chardonnay and he asked me if I had had the Barratt Piccadilly Valley lately. No was my reply. Is it any good asked? It most certainly is was his reply. Long story short I gave him some money and took a bottle home.

In the glass the wine almost has a Riesling like clarity. We let the wine sit for about 25 minutes just to get it closer to room temp. After that there was an abundance of grapefruit zest and just a little bit of locut in there too – haven’t seen that in chardonnay for yonks. Gorgeous acid was accompanied by more grapefruit, slight toast and licorice powder; a super chardonnay indeed.

Wonderful balance and length, with complexity and weight evenly balanced. A no-brainer for the XMAS stocking this year.

Drink with scallop ceveche
Drink till 2014
96
Screwcap 13.5%v/v from St Judes Cellars and www.barrattwines.com.au

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