Description
2025 Winery of the Year – Halliday Australian Wine Companion “It’s been an outstanding winery for a long time, but the combination of energy and expertise – and no doubt plenty more besides – that winemaker Melanie Chester has brought since she arrived at the winery in November 2021 has frankly been breathtaking. Melanie is a force in Australian wine.” Campbell Mattinson, 2025 Halliday Australian Wine Companion
“Giant Steps is firmly established among the Australian wine elite. It’s long been a quality-obsessed outfit, but if anything, its sale to Jackson Family Wines in ’20 only sharpened the emphasis on quality. Single-vineyard chardonnay and pinot noir from across the upper and lower Yarra Valley are the foundation for the winery’s reputation, but really every winemaking excursion this winery takes has a habit of turning to gold.” Campbell Mattinson, for Halliday Wine Companion.
Established in 1997 in the Yarra Valley, Giant Steps has built a reputation based on expressive wines with purity and finesse. The Giant Steps wines are a direct reflection of their individual vineyard sites, located across the Yarra Valley from Tarrawarra to Gladysdale. Giant Steps was founded by wine industry pioneer Phil Sexton, who ventured from Margaret River to Yarra Valley to find the ideal site to cultivate Chardonnay and Pinot Noir of purity and finesse.
Distinctive expressions of Yarra Valley chardonnay and pinot noir take centre stage at Giant Steps. Giant Steps produce wines with delicate restraint and focused energy with single vineyard wines from Applejack, Sexton, Primavera, Bastard Hill and Tarraford Vineyards reflecting the diversity of the region. The winemaking philosophy is simple: valuing vine and soil health, low yields, and growing the best possible grapes that express their varietal characteristics and sense of place. Triple sorted, minimal intervention, gravity flow winery and an unwavering attention to detail and quality.
About this wine from the winemaker: “Our Yarra Valley range showcases the best of the Yarra Valley as a region. The row orientations and clonal selection within our vineyards, combined with influences from soil and terrain, give us an incredible palette to paint the best picture of our Yarra Valley vineyards year after year.”
“The 2024 vintage is a more classic Yarra season. A cool start to spring and ideal flowering conditions lead to good fruit set and moderate yields. December was cool and mild, with significan rainfall at New Years and during the first week of January giving the vines a good drink leading into the heat of February. Mid to late February was drier and warmer than is common in the Yarra, leading to great ripening conditions with no disease pressure and a quite fast vintage. In 2024, all of our Pinot and Chardonnay was ready in quick succession, leading to a compressed harvest – with the whole valley picked in the space of 3 weeks (where it normally spreads across 6 weeks).
“At Giant Steps, we hand pick 100% of our fruit and fastidiously hand sorted in the vineyard . The grapes are then transported to the winery and put into the cold room over night to cool down to 4 deg C before pressing the day following. Chardonnay is always whole bunch pressed either directly to barrel or pressed to tank before immediate transfer to barrel with full solids. The wine is wild fermented in French oak puncheons, 15% of which is new while the balance is seasoned. We allow the ferments to get warm, and stir ferments daily to encourage fermentation and build texture. The level of malolactic fermentation (MLF) is dependant on season. In 2024 10% of the barrels went through MLF. Post fermentation, we sulphur and then hold the barrels in a reductive environment on full lees with no stirring until blending and bottling in November.”
95 points, Philip Rich, Halliday Wine Companion “An even split of upper and lower Yarra fruit; both estate grown and from growers. Less mlf than last year. Smells fleshy with aromas of stone fruits, together with a little pink grapefruit and light citrus notes. It’s both approachable and gentle, even as a young wine, but the balance for drinking now or cellaring in the short to medium term is absolutely spot on.”
93 points, Campbell Mattinson, The Wine Front “I’d sit down and hook into this in a heartbeat. It’s a chardonnay with drinkability written all over it. Stonefruit, tonic water, lemon sherbet, musk and smoky bacon notes come drenched in nashi pear and cream. It’s dry, lively, well-fruited and flavoursome, but the finish has that slightly briny, slightly grapefruit-y edge that makes you want more. Yes please to this one.”
RRP $45 *Our Special Price $37.99 when you buy 6 or more of this wine*
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