CHARDONNAY BLENDING
Our Chief Winemaker, Tim Shand, shares the latest from the winery as the team prepares to blend our Chardonnay.
"Blending our 2024 Voyager Estate Chardonnay is a task we usually tackle in November. However, due to the earlier and warmer harvest this year, we’ve noticed the wines evolving a little faster than usual. As a result, we'll be bringing them out of the barrel and starting the blending process sooner.
The journey begins with blind tastings of every Chardonnay batch that's been aging in oak. By tasting blind, we remove any biases, ensuring we're grading based purely on quality. From there, the batches are assigned to one of three categories: MJW, Voyager Estate, or Coastal. Next, we individually taste every barrel in each batch to ensure the consistency we expect across the group.
For the blending process, we start by combining all the barrels graded as Voyager Estate and above. We then refine the blend to ensure it meets our standards in both style and quality. If possible, we’ll pull aside a few exceptional barrels for our MJW Chardonnay, only made in really great years.
We're pleased with the quality of the 2024 vintage, but as with every year, we will be selective to ensure only the best wines make it into bottle."
