Seville Estate The Barber Chardonnay 2015
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Try pairing this wine with white meats and seafood.
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Wine & Spirits
2015 Yarra Valley The Barber Chardonnay Dylan McMahon makes this wine from vineyards in the Upper Yarra Valley, fermenting it without added yeast in barrels as well as in tanks. He uses French oak barrels, from 300 to 500 liters, 10 percent new, and the quality of the fruit in 2015 shines through. While less ambitious than his estate-grown chardonnay, it's more immediately complex: The fruit character is fascinating, ranging from tart peach to something more exotic and musky, cool and layered with earthy savor. Concise and yet persistent, this is a chardonnay to pour with crab.
Now grandson Dylan McMahon is at the helm as winemaker and the wines have never been stronger. Seville Estate continues to fashion dry, austere, mineral and acid driven Chardonnay, along with structured, herbal and spice laden Pinot Noir's and Shiraz.Yarra.
One of the most popular and versatile white wine grapes, Chardonnay offers a wide range of flavors and styles depending on where it is grown and how it is made. While it tends to flourish in most environments, Chardonnay from its Burgundian homeland produces some of the most remarkable and longest lived examples. California produces both oaky, buttery styles and leaner, European-inspired wines. Somm Secret—The Burgundian subregion of Chablis, while typically using older oak barrels, produces a bright style similar to the unoaked style. Anyone who doesn't like oaky Chardonnay would likely enjoy Chablis.
As the most important area of wine production in Victoria today, the Yarra Valley is most popular for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, which account for over half of vineyard acreage. A gentle, rolling and rural region alongside the Margaret River, the Yarra Valley has a cool maritime climate with a lengthy growing season, perfect for these cool-climate varieties.
Two styles of Pinot Noir are possible here. The warmer Lower Yarra Valley with sandy, loam soils, produces plush and fruity Pinot Noir while the cooler, higher-elevation Upper Yarra Valley with soils of young red basalt, produces more angular and mineral-driven Pinot Noir.
Yarra Valley Chardonnay is among the best in Australia. To preserve the floral aromatics and fresh citrus flavors for which this area’s Chardonnay is so appreciated, time in barrel is restrained (though barrel fermentation is common). The best Yarra Valley Chardonnays display brilliant acidity, leesy characteristics, citrus, stone fruit and flavors of ginger and spice.
Shiraz and Cabernet find success in parts of this region as well.