2016 Uva Mira Chardonnay
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Tasting notes
The 2016 Chardonnay, aged nine months in 50% new French oak, opens with aromas of underripe pineapple, cheese rind, waxy lees tones and oak spices. The palate gives great complexity with green apple and underlying nutty and leesy character with a balanced expression of oak. It is weighty and textural with focused fruit, continuing to change on the palate. This wine keeps me on my toes as I follow the turns it takes. It is structured and complex and has a lingering, feel-good finish.
Critic scores
Average Score
Tamlyn Currin, jancisrobinson.com
Anthony Mueller, Wine Advocate
More reviews and scores
Their flagship white comes from a single vineyard next to the tasting room. It has three slopes and 90% always comes from 0.2 ha facing the ocean on the cooler side. Very low pH of 3.1. Fermented in French oak barrels where it spends roughly nine months and kept on lees with monthly bâtonnage (sometimes twice a month, early on). He doesn’t like the reductive style of Chardonnay. He is playing around with some spontaneous fermentation. A wine that mustn’t be served too cold – it clams up totally. Baked vanilla-spiced nectarines. Sweet oak, slightly too much on the custard side of vanilla, and a faint sour note on the finish, but bright and rounded, like lemon meringue. Very much traditional Stellenbosch Chardonnay with a smart citrus edge. Very well groomed. Might well benefit from another year, and needs rich food. (TC)