Tiers Vineyard Latest Reviews

THE good news is this is a top- quality chardonnay; the bad news is it there was only a small batch produced. My advice is to get online and grab a bottle or two of these today.

96/100

Medium to full yellow colour. A complex but youthful lanolin, wool, nut-toffee and lightly floral bouquet gives entrée to a tight, slightly shrill, high-acid palate. Very fine, tight and long. The acidity is almost a tad overdone alone, but with the right food it would sing. Fruit does the talking: the complexing factors are there but well in the background. A very smart wine which will improve with cellaring.

96 points

Wine of the Week

If you are looking for a chardonnay with precision, purity and linearity you won't go wrong with the delicious cool-climate chardonnay grown on a vineyard that veteran winemaker Brian Croser describes as producing fruit that provides "a pure expression of terroir". The vineyard site is 450 metres above sea level at Piccadilly in the Adelaide Hills and this is made entirely from the Tiers old vines planted in 1980. It shows no sign of 2013 having been a warmer than average year. French Vosges oak barriques (33% new) and partial malo play second fiddle to the quality fruit here; ripe stone fruit characters duel deftly with grapefruit and minerally acid notes to produce a wine that is refined and elegant. An Australian classic.

Definitively sophisticated in its sleek profile, offering satiny curves of ripe stone fruit, green apple and sexy, nougat-scented oak, the wine feels molten and flowing over it's impressive length, but doesn't forget to cleanse the palate with revitalising acidity. There's a sense of a wine captive in its youthful shell too; a portent for its impressive cellaring future.

94 points