Alkimi Willowlake Chardonnay 2021

2021 will go down as a very special vintage. The season will be marked with a nod to the vintages of old in the Yarra Valley, where cooler conditions allowed for a long ripening window which allowed for excellent acid, elegance and intense flavour development.

Personally, we likened the vintage to 2020 and also the amazing 2017 vintage. Drawing on this knowledge we sat back and waited a little in respects to picking to allow for full flavour maturity. In the winery it was a vintage to soak up and enjoy. The cooler conditions and low yields combined to allow us to feather the fermentations into the most idyllic spot prior to winter.

The Willowlake vineyard has featured for numerous years in the Alkimi range with Pinot Noir and this is the first release of Willowlake Chardonnay. This Chardonnay block is the lowest altitude at the entire vineyard at 160m asl and the clone is the I10V1. Soils are fluvial deposits of gravel, clay, sand and silt over marine derived siltstone and mudstone. The grapes were handpicked 11th March and wholebunch pressed to puncheons. A wild fermentation was conducted and malolactic fermentation was inhibited. After 9 months on lees, the wine was bottled in January 2022 unfined and unfiltered.

The appearance is pale straw. The aroma shows notes of lemon balm, grapefruit notes with white peaches. Savoury nuances of toasty oak and lanolin combine with notes of the Italian fennel biscuit Taralli.

The palate is fresh and citrus driven with green apple and orange peel. There are subtle honeyed notes with herbaceous notes of fresh asparagus. The phenolics marry with the acid driving a very fresh cumquat-citrus finish.