Accolades

Our Accolades

2023 Estate Pinot Noir

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“A lower-yield year with prolonged ripening and coolness alongside. It’s a svelte and meticulous pinot noir, tightly coiled around a strongly minerally profile with brisk acidity dragging the wine long and to a distinct, persistent finish. There’s tart red cherry, some smoky spice elements, a touch of forest floor and brambly blackberries in the mix, clove as a gentle indicator of oak seasoning and an array of exotic souk-like aromatics and flavours lending complexity. The wine is quite understated in its profile but delivers a strong sense of structure and tension, length and control. It’s a very fine pinot noir leaning beautifully into its more savoury flex. Utter charm is the result.”

Mike Bennie (Halliday Wine Companion)

“The 2023 Estate Pinot Noir is stylish, red-fruited, floral and fine. It has notes of beeswax and clove, cherry and blood orange. The wine is super elegant and fine, with a flow of red fruit across the palate that feels like a harness of the cool season that birthed it. This is very good, silky. The fruit for this wine is from the Ashton Hills vineyard—hence, “estate”—and was handpicked, keeping the clones D5V12 (42%), 777 (25%), Martini (22%), MV6 (9%) and 828 (2%) separate. It was wild fermented in small open-top fermenters with 14% whole bunches and basket pressed to French oak barriques (17% new) for nine months’ maturation."

Erin Larkin (RobertParker.com)

“The cool and wet season contributed to a longer hang time on the vines, with the resulting aromatics and excellent structure ideal for a classy Pinot Noir like this one. It’s a combination of clones with some whole bunches contributing to its structure and poise. Intense aromas of cherry and truffle with a palate that is powerful and elegant. It’s light-bodied but there is ample power in here sustained through to the long finish.”

Ray Jordan (Winepilot)

“This is a powerhouse. A truly, inherently, varietal powerhouse. It shows strong fruit, strong tannin and strong oak, though all are measured, and all show finesse. Cherries red and black, peppercorns, cedarwood, smoked meat and a wild array of herbs, florals and spices. It puts up the spinnaker and then sails it on home. This is a beautiful Pinot Noir from the estate of Ashton Hills."

Campbell Mattinson (The Winefront)

2023 Reserve Chardonnay

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“Marvellous example of what the Piccadilly Valley can do when things come together. It’s an assemblage of barrels from three vineyards. It displays remarkable purity and vibrancy with pristine energy on the palate. Chalky fine acid provides the lifeblood to sustain the very long palate while complexity is generated from wild yeast barrel fermentation. Terrific wine.“

Ray Jordan (Winepilot)

“The 2023 Reserve Chardonnay is the same fruit as the Piccadilly Valley Chardonnay, but a barrel selection, and the difference in the cuvées more than justifies the distinction. Where the Piccadilly Valley Chardonnay is creamy and nutty, this is toasty and powerful, with elegance and impact at every turn. The oak is slightly more prominent here in the Reserve (20% new here as opposed to 18% new in the Piccadilly Valley Chardonnay), and yet the fruit has the same creamy, nutty flow as the other. While this is more authoritative and certainly more focused, it also feels as if it needs a little more time to come together. Maybe a longer time in oak would have mellowed it out, or maybe not. I love it either way—criticism is ghastly, really, picking apart things we ultimately love. This is excellent, whichever way you look at it, and I believe it will be even better in time. 12% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.."

Erin Larkin (Robertparker.com)

"Inviting and sophisticated, with aromas of lemon pith, flint, wet stones and hazelnuts. The palate is medium-bodied with laser-like acidity, giving notes of candied lime zest, green apple skin and Asian pears, finishing with a steely minerality. Extremely tightly wound with an underlying power. Made from a barrel selection of estate chardonnay Excellent use of oak."

(JamesSuckling.com)