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 Terre Maritime is drawn from several rows of Chardonnay in the top corner of Merricks Grove. Barney Flanders has always felt this parcel results in a superb and unique Chardonnay. Here, the 28-year-old vines are rooted in cool grey loam with pockets of crumbly red clay. The plot sits at 90 metres and faces slightly east, offering the vines a cooler, more sheltered aspect. There’s less vigour here than in the rest of the vineyard and the bunches are a touch smaller. As a result, the fruit from this parcel makes the intense yet finessed wines we associate with Garagiste Chardonnay.
After rigorous sorting, the fruit was whole-bunch pressed into 500- litre puncheons where it wild-fermented before resting on gross lees for nine months. The cool ’24 vintage has left its mark. The wine is salt-licked and clean, living up to its namesake. It opens with zaps of acidity and a lightning-strike of flint followed by a budding glow from white stone fruit and anise spice. It’s a gorgeous, don’t miss Mornington Chardonnay that will reward patient and impatient drinkers alike.
97 points, Jane Faulkner, The Wine Companion “Everything in a chardonnay that I fall for is on full display with Terre Maritime. It’s flinty, citrusy, with dabs of white stone fruit and ginger spice. Beautiful texture, glistening, a real purity within. It’s complex, detailed yet so refined, compelling all the way through to the last drop. Again, tops the charts as the finest chardonnay on the peninsula. The benchmark.”
95 points, Gary Walsh, The Wine Front “Lemon oil, flint and struck match, quite the salty sea dog here with sea spray and samphire, Japanese ginger, pink grapefruit and nectarine. A few too many things listed there, for sure, though, hey, it’s complex! It’s a tight wine, saline and savoury, a lemon curd richness in with grapefruit, aniseed is something I forgot to mention, and the finish has a bit of 9V battery on the tongue sort of energy. It has chalky bits and lots of personality. It tastes like a wine from somewhere, which is always a good thing in my book. Very nice.”
RRP $80 Our Special Price $68.99 when you buy 6 or more of this wine
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