Recognition

Pale colour. Intense vanilla, marzipan, lime cordial aromas with tonic water notes. Richly flavoured lime cordial, vanilla, grapefruit flavours, fine lacy/chalky textures and long fresh acidity. Lovely precision and mineral length. Drink now – 2034

96 points …

From Brian Croser’s prized Piccadilly Valley vineyard, there’s a lot going on here in terms of white stone fruit, chalky palate feels, and subtle spice notes. All class, and maybe hard to track down – must be something about Hills …

This 2021 Chardonnay Tiers Vineyard 1.5m is really delicious. The phenolics that curve in on every angle of the mouth are grippy and chalky and get a firm grasp onto the preserved lemon and salted peach flavors that blossom in …

The use of 1.5m in the wine’s title refers to its French-inspired close-planted 1.5m row spacing in the vineyard. The wine is regularly defined by its racy acidity, making it a different personality to its Tiers sibling. If you love …

You remember when I pumped up the little brother wine to this new Tapanappa Tiers 1.5m Chardonnay 2021? This is a significant step up. Different though.

Drawn from the close-planted block across the path from the original Tiers 1979 plantings …

A sheeer delight from the get-go, with grilled peach and toasted hazelnuts. There’s a creaminess, almost a milky panacotta like offering, with perhaps a little herb – sage – steeped.

The palate is crisp, taut – a certain minerally quality …

Pale colour. Beautiful grapefruit, apricot, cashew nut, roasted almond with underlying vanilla oak notes. Generous and supple with lovely apricot, white peach, grapefruit, grilled nut flavours, fine slinky textures, creamy mid-palate complexity, linear fresh acidity and integrated vanilla, hint crème …

A big step up here from the Piccadilly label, with fruit off a portion of the Tiers vineyard replanted in 2003 with Burgundian clones at higher density than the original plots. Very pale in colour and embryonic, this is still …

Pale lemon-yellow hue. Lemon curd, struck-flint and smoky-oak undertones. The palate fills with intense lemon blossoms and stone fruits, whilst savoury, smoky and stony minerality fill all the nooks and crannies of the mouth. Still incredibly tightly wound, it drives …

Could be a good choice for people who are vertically challenged?

So flinty and tight, but has generosity of flavour with white peach, brioche, cashew and cedar, and a cool fennel perfume. Fine-boned, chalky texture, cool grapefruit acidity mixing it …