2023 Bella Luna Chardonnay

2023 is 26 years of farming the Bella Luna site. It’s intricacies are slowly unveiling themselves to us and in turn, so too is the way we make it. Challenges were a plenty in 23 starting off with an incredibly wet spring, our lo fi yet nimble quad bike spray system allowed us to get access to the vineyard to put out crucial early season spray whereas many were getting bogged in this period. Don’t worry, we managed a bogging or two as well.

We managed to stay on top of things through to fruit set and were stoked to see a pretty healthy crop out there, the best we had seen for a long time.

Grapes ripened rather evenly harvested all together on 21 March and were whole bunch pressed; 2 barrels were filled with full solids and 2 went to tank for a very short settling of 12 hours prior to being sent to barrel. None of the barrels were new, with 1- 1 year old, 1- 2 year old and the rest old.

Bella Luna’s fruit profile is rich and structured, were are finding that the inclusion of new oak in this wine is unnecessary and a distraction from the vineyard’s character.

Inoculated with our house starter which is made with Bela Luna Fruit picked 10 days prior to the first pick and started in the vineyard. The wine was held on full ferment lees, with 90% going through secondary fermentation, for 10 months. Sulphuring occurred in the Spring. Prior to the barrels being filled with the 24s- we blended 750L of Bella Luna to foudre with fine lees. The wine sat in foudre through the winter for another 5 months prior to being bottled with a light filtration.

TECHNICAL DETAILS

Alcohol: 12.1

pH: 3.38

Bottles made: 738

TASTING NOTES

Hay, yellow stonefruit, honey, lemon juice and ginger. It’s comforting and layered. Full of personality. Pink lady apple, yellow grapefruit juice, spice and just ripe yellow stone fruit. Formidable shape and structure, chalky, mineral acid line.