Tapanappa Tiers Vineyard 2024 Chardonnay

Of the past five wonderful vintages in Tiers Vineyard, 2024 was not the coolest but fulfilled that old aphorism, “In a cool vineyard site, the best wines are produced in slightly warmer vintages.”

The colour of 2024 Tiers is pale lemon with a green tint. The aroma is of ripe, cool-year Chardonnay fruit, sliced nectarine and pear with faint leatherwood honey spice complexed by yeast, cashew and subtle oak. The flavour is intense and fresh, and the texture is significant, finished with a lingering cool year acidity.

The taut edge of acid and the slight astringency and bitterness of the grapefruit finish, perfectly offset the fruit and texture that are the hallmarks of the Tiers Chardonnay.

2024 Tiers Chardonnay is “a slightly warmer than average vintage of a unique wine defined by the truly distinguished Tiers Vineyard terroir”.

Vintage Notes

The Tiers Vineyard was planted in 1979, the first vineyard in the Piccadilly Valley since the 19th century. The vineyard is close spaced and vertical canopy, the first of this quality focussed design in Australia. The clone of Chardonnay in “old” Tiers is of unknown origins but probably relates to the first introduction of Chardonnay vines to Australia by James Busby in 1832.

Cool like the 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 vintages before it, the 2024 vintage in the Piccadilly Valley was another low crop vintage at 4 tonnes/hectare. The 2024 vintage was marginally warmer, 1194°C-days, versus the long-term average of 1108°C-days. We have now had five successive cooler vintages, 2020 to 2024, after the near unrelenting warmth of the previous decade of vintages.

The Chardonnay grapes in the 44-year-old Tiers Vineyard ripened in still and cool air, sunny conditions, ideal autumnal weather. The Tiers Vineyard old block yielded up its exceptional quality fruit on the 15th of March, two week earlier than average.

Winemaking Notes

The hand harvested Chardonnay grapes from the Tiers Vineyard old block (1981), were chilled in trays in the cold-room to 2°C.

The cold grapes were tipped into our gentle airbag presses and the whole fruit pressed juice was pumped to tank before being gravitated to French oak barriques (one third new) for fermentation. The fermentation lasted two months in the cool autumn conditions. The wine was barrel aged on full lees until November of 2024 when it was clear racked from barrique and bottled.

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