"The fruit for this wine was acquired by happenstance really, a late season phone call from a winemaker friend offering the number of a grower who was looking to find a home for their 2022 crop. Long story short, I took the drive up through the upper Yarra and through to the Lake Eildon / Mt Torbreck area to have a look at the vineyard. What I found was a beautiful vineyard sitting on alluvial, volcanic soils on the banks of the Goulburn River.

This vineyard is getting close to 50 years of age and is mostly planted to Syrah but has 7 long rows of Chardonnay amongst it. It is being farmed organically and the health of the vineyard is quite incredible. I’ve never seen such a heavy , healthy crop on a vineyard in all my time !

We picked the 7 rows of Chardonnay ourselves in the cool early morning under constant drizzle. The fruit that came in (a lot of it had bird damage and was left in the vineyard) was of exceptionally high quality. We harvested about 900kg, just enough to fill one 676L ceramic egg.

The fruit was lightly macerated and left to soak for 24hrs before being pressed off into the egg, here it underwent a long steady ferment and once finished was topped and sealed for the winter. It spent 9 months here and was then bottled by hand directly from the egg without any additions.

It was always my intention to only release wines under the Nikau label that were made from fruit we farm ourselves but, this was somewhat of a wildcard. The quality of the fruit and the quality of the resultant wine led me to the decision to adorn it with the Nikau label. It will probably be the only time it happens to be honest. Stylistically the wine is Nikau through and Through.

The wine is fine-boned, and elegant with so much purity and mineral drive ! I really love what the ceramic egg does for wines, probably more so what it doesn’t do actually. The wines always seem so focused and posed, even when young.

The vine age really shows in this wine, great complexity, balance and minerality. This is a wine I like a lot.

Chardonnay sans oak is a very good thing in my book ! This a a beautiful wine indeed.

550 Bottles produced"

Baw Baw, Australia /Chardonnay