2019 Xanadu Reserve Chardonnay, 6x750ml
2019 Xanadu Reserve Chardonnay, 6x750ml
Availability: 4 weeks
Case size: 6 / Bottle size: 750ml
Duty Status
From £295.00
Critics Score: 98
Publication: Erin Larkin, Wine Advocate
Drinking Dates: 2022-2035
The 2019 Reserve Chardonnay is elegant, lacy, savory and salty, with a reverberating baritone of fruit, oak and spice. This is monumentally good, and although it is drinking beautifully now, it will only improve. The peak drinking window will be (*consults crystal ball*) in 2026. Godspeed—it'll be great on either side, too.
The Chardonnay style at Xanadu is pronounced in the glass, well established over time, and is crucial to understanding prior to assessing the wines. Firstly, and most obviously, malolactic fermentation is assiduously blocked. This paves the way for the extraordinarily taut, nervy acidity endemic to the Gingin clone to be on full display, and boy, does it shine. To give numbers to that statement via the Reserve range: the pH was at its lowest at three (2020) and highest at 3.21 (2008), while the total acidity is somewhere between 7.3 (2012) and 8.9 (2018/2019/2020). On release, the wines are as tense as anything and can appear austere, even. However, the thundering fruit power that the clone (and the vineyard) is so effortlessly capable of pads out all corners of the palate and is essentially lying in wait for the years to unfurl its potential. At about five years from vintage, the wines blossom, and it is only then that the kaleidoscopic intensity of the fruit is freed from the shackles of acid—all rises as one in the glass, revealing wines of thunderous power, eminent balance and extraordinary grace.
- Erin Larkin, Wine Advocate
- Erin Larkin, Wine Advocate
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