Description
Garagiste is definitely one of Mornington Peninsula’s brightest rising stars! Named in honour of the ‘Garagiste’ – ‘garage’ vintners of Bordeaux who thumbed their nose at the rigid traditions of chateaux, winemaker Barney Flanders makes succulent, finely tuned and elegantly crafted cool-climate Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Gris, highlighting the subtleties of the Peninsula’s different sub-regions with small batches of very limited and high quality wines. Fruit is sourced predominantly from highly prized Merricks Grove vineyard, Silverwood vineyard (Balnarring) and Hugh Robinson vineyard in Moorooduc. Since their first release in 2006 their wines are highly sought after, highly regarded and like their labels, very cool!
The inaugural release of this new bottling, Terre Maritime is drawn from a few rows of Chardonnay sited in the top corner of the Merricks Grove vineyard. It’s a white equivalent to the Terre de Feu bottling. Unlike the majority of the vineyard, the vines from which this wine is sourced are rooted on brown soils as opposed to the more typical reddish dirt. So it’s less vigorous and the bunches and berries are smaller and their juice is more intense. The parcel also faces slightly eastwards, offering the vines in this cooler, more sheltered aspect. The Garagiste boys have long wondered what this parcel would do if it was made separately and now we have the answer. The parcel was managed with extra care over recent years with this cuvée in mind, and the wine produced has tremendous class and textural depth, with pronounced florals and a saline edge that brings wonderful freshness. In short, it’s very different! This first release was raised in a single, 1-year-old 500-litre puncheon and one seasoned barrique. Expect deeper aromatics here–spiced pear, grilled fennel and aniseed–with white floral overtones and a racy, driven palate with superb depth of characters that match the aromatics. Huge energy and freshness and a long super impressive, crystalline and mineral fresh finish. Brilliant work Mr Flanders!
98 points and included in Best of the Best Chardonnays in James Halliday’s 2020 Australian Wine Companion “Beautiful wine. Complex, precise, long and utterly compelling. Burnt match, green apple, citrus , flint and stone fruits. A seamless line of flavour that is pure, glassy textured and ridiculously long. Bravo.”
94 points, Campbell Mattinson, The Wine Front “It sits in the glass like Lucy in the sky. Drink it at a lunch table in the early summer sun and it glitters like diamonds. When the flavour comes it’s textured like satin. It’s a white wine in control of its realm. White peach, sunny apples, ripe pear and the flavour we refer to as oakspice. It starts slow and builds, like a truck cresting a hill, the back palate an irresistible surge of juicy fruit, grapefruit then biting on the finish like brakes. It’s not overdone, it’s refined and stylish, but it flashes a few of its tricks. Maritime Chardonnay, on the beach, late sun. That’d be a day.”
RRP $79 Very Limited stock.
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.