Colour: Light gold.
Aroma: Baked custard tart in a buttery base topped with peaches. Sourdough
bread crust, Anzac biscuits toasted pinenuts and subtle sweet spices of
nutmeg and cinnamon from French oak fermentation and maturation.
Palate: Full bodied with a silky texture. There is stone fruit flavours with
spice and nuttiness from French oak. The palate is round, generous and flavoursome with a crisp flinty finish that gives the wine a refreshing lingering aftertaste. Serve Chilled. This wine demands seafood! Oysters, seafood pasta, freshly peeled prawns or fish and chips at the beach. It will suit and match formal and informal occasions. A grazing platter with friends.
Cellaring: Delicious in its youth, it will evolve with correct cellaring for 1-3 years.
Vineyard: The fruit for the Leone Chardonnay comes from a 1.2 hectare block on our estate Rowland Flat vineyard. The vines were planted in 2005 in a sandy/rocky hill side on a single wire trellis.
Winemaking: Our 2018 Leone Chardonnay is a contemporary take on the traditional Australian style. We wanted to capture the richness of Chardonnay flavour without excessive oakiness or overt buttery, oiliness of the mid 90’s style. This wine was 100% French oak barrel fermented in seasoned barrels of various ages from 1- 5 years. Post fermentation the barrels were topped to full and seeded for malolactic fermentation. There was no lees stirring and the wine lay quietly without disturbance with malolactic fermentation being monitored weekly until the desired texture was achieved and then stopped. After 7 months of barrel maturation and lees contact the wine was emptied from oak and prepared for bottling.