Nocturne Wines Single Vineyard Chardonnay 2021

Stuart McCloskey "It has taken several years for this wine to bed in and it has another decade of development ahead of it. There’s a lovely perfume of meyer lemon, confit lemon peel, grapefruit, green apple skins, flint, toast, and bags of salinity. Noticeably fresh and tightly coiled. Fresh ginger and peach emerge with 20-or-so minutes in the glass. The palate captivates and flows along uninterrupted. It feels glossy but backed-up with a stony, fine boned component. This is graceful and a serious wine. Certainly, sensitively handled. Saline drives the wine forward as does the tension. The balance is beautiful – super long and I do love the dab of fresh ginger on the finish. This is far from being ‘big’ and ‘blousy’ yet takes command of the glass. Lots of density. This comes highly recommended and best served with a plate of baked scallops and Zalto’s Burgundy stemware. Aeration is key – decant for 20-30 minutes and do not serve in small glasses. I have snaffled a dozen bottles as it will be fascinating to see how this developments over the next 10-years."

Erin Larkin, RobertParker.com "The 2021 Single Vineyard Chardonnay hails from the Forrest Vineyard and has all the glassy, sleek characteristics that the 2021 season had to offer. Subtly spiced on the nose (roasted curry leaf, fennel seeds), this quickly gives way to the flow of powerful, crystalline fruit in the mouth. Acid is prodigious, as usual with this cuvée, but in 2021, it only serves to further accentuate the crushed pistachio/rosewater, white peach and Golden Delicious apples in the mouth. Classy. I recently opened a bottle of the 2020, and with a couple of extra years in glass, it was epic. If you can, my suggestion would be to hold this for several years. Your patience will be amply rewarded. 13% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.

Julian Langworthy "So in keeping with change this year sees a new site for Nocturne’s SV Chardonnay. The Forrest Vineyard in central Willyabrup.  My first and devastatingly brutal love, the tiny Tassel Park vineyard was wiped out in 2021 and in 2022 but hope springs eternal and I have learnt to love again. This pilot wine from this new site is pretty darn cool and whilst a change a very exciting one. Only 128 six packs made, I drank a few of them too.

The fruit is of course from a single site, the Forrest Vineyard in the Willyabrup sub-region of Margaret River.  Moreover this wine is from a tiny ridge section from within the middle of this vineyard selectively picked for this wine. Planted to the classic  WA Gin Gin clone it’s a wine of unbelievable natural acid presence and structural drive. The vineyard is otherwise largely flat and quite close to the coast some 3kms only and in common with Tassel Park is planted on deep silver-grey sands. The picking date is generally relatively early in the chardonnay season given the vineyard's low yielding nature.

The grapes were handpicked on 19th of February; and whole bunch-pressed directly to new, one and two-year-old puncheons, with no settling or fining processes. This juice was then carefully monitored and spontaneous fermentation kicked off on day four after pressing. After a four-week ferment the wine remained on gross lees unsulphured until August of that year. In December the wine was emptied from barrel, settled, filtered and bottled.

This is an exciting site that holds amazing acid structure and lovely al dente tannin. It needs some time to truly unfurl, unfold, and show its true colours but one sniff will show that it has the character that Nocturne’s SV Chardys are famous for. Flint, funk, just-ripe stone fruit, grilled limes and hope… In hope that change is always to grow and to hopefully improve. Get around this acid laden baby it’s a bright new future out there."