BOTTLE STOP

There’s a lot of chardonnay growing steadfastly in Australian dirt, and if the variety has one overriding character trait, in vineyard terms, it’s being adaptable to just about any geographic and climatic condition imaginable.

Of course, what you get is a wide range of resulting wine styles, which can be attributed far too simply to their location.

There are surprises, too, when it comes to the source of our best chardonnay – Tasmania, north and south, tick; Victoria’s Yarra Valley or Mornington Peninsula, tick; The Adelaide Hills, yep; and Western Australia’s Margaret River, for sure.

But grown in NSW’s Hunter Valley, where it can be subtropically humid and even stormy during fruit-ripening season? It hardly registers for the cool-climate or high-altitude cred that big-name labels boast.

We’re talking elite Australian wine, by the way, when it comes to Tyrrell’s Vat 47 Chardonnay ($70), which was first made in 1970 after pioneer Murray Tyrrell hopped a fence of a nearby old vineyard and helped himself to a few cuttings so he could plant his own resource. That original vineyard is now owned outright by the Tyrrells.

“It’s is a very important piece of Australian wine landscape,” co-winemaker Chris Tyrrell says.

So now we have a deeper drill – it’s not necessarily just the region, it can be more specifically down to the site.

For the record, the most recent Vat 47s – the 2012 and 2013 vintages – are exceptional wines, released when four years old, complex with varietal stone fruit and honeydew melon flavours and 50-per-cent natural-ferment characters, adding to a chalky, grainy texture.

The drill-down gets deeper still. We now see intricate winemaking involved, making impactful decisions about the ferments, the oak regime, the maturation process and much, much more.

The same story applies as we head south to Tasmania, and a terrific chardonnay that’s all about the vineyard rather than the broader concept of Tasmania as a single region.

Tolpuddle 2016 Chardonnay ($70) is driven by its Coal River Valley source, which offers natural acidity with all the ultimate finesse that follows – whiffs of wheatgerm and sea shells, tastes of white crunchy nectarine, lemon and lime juice, and mouth-watering pithy texture to finish.

Is that the vineyard alone or in concert with Tolpuddle winemakers Martin Shaw, Adam Wadewitz and team? Clearly it’s both elements, their understanding and interpretation of the site being critical in the final sculpting of one of the great Australian chardonnays.