Description
Please note: Limited Release wines are only available via our Cellar Door or website
To learn more about our Limited Release ‘Barrel 24’ Chardonnay please watch a ‘1 Minute Tasting’ video presented by our Consultant Winemaker, Salvatore Leone:
With a golden colour, this wine delivers an intense nose of hazelnut, white chocolate, tobacco/cigar box & dried apricot – whilst preserving the fine base of Chardonnay. On the palate it is full, rich and well-structured with smooth acidity and some spice leading to a persistent finish.
Tamlyn Currin for Jancis Robinson –
It’s wines like this that make me sit up and realise that English wine is moving into a different gear. It’s not perfect. It has (very) sharp edges that I would breathe more easily if they were polished just a little smoother. But this is like one of those spectacularly glassy marble worktops that, if you’re as shallow as me, you inch over to at that posh dinner party and run your fingers over when no one is looking just because the smoothness grounds you and makes you feel a little less like you’re an imposter in a world where the accents could slice the marble like a cheese wire. So, we’ve established that the smoky-marble accent of this wine is pretty precise and scarily sharp. I find hazelnut skins, but it’s more skinny than hazelnuts. I love this wiry, bony Chardonnay for its pure English accent, it’s fine-tweed texture, English orchard fruit. It’s Chardonnay with received pronunciation and expensive worktops. But maybe also a cheeky spliff in the garden.
John Mobbs, Great British Wine Round Up –
This was a lovely surprise this month from Albourne Estate – I’ve long been a fan of Alison Nightingale’s wines, particularly her still wines, and this very limited Chardonnay is one of her most interesting yet.
It’s made from a single 500-litre American Oak barrel of 2018 Chardonnay, from which the wine was directly bottled by hand, unfined and unfiltered. The nose is perfumed and involving, with toasted oak, hazelnuts and dried mint, and bold caramelised peach and apricot notes too.
The palate is something else as well. Brisk, bold but subtly tempered acidity integrates nicely with a stronger focus on those peachy, dried apricot notes the nose hinted at. The oak is prominent, proud, but not overwhelming. This wine had a real nuttiness, and grip too. It’s almost got a Jura-like rawness to it – distinctive and delicious!