2024 Attwoods Glenlyon Chardonnay, Macedon Ranges

This cool-climate Chardonnay greets with vibrant, lifted and flinty white nectarine and citrus on the nose. The savoury palate offers buttery, yet fresh fruit flavours driven by bright acidity and subtle spice notes from oak.

Generous and sleek, this looks beautiful now, but will no doubt reward further cellaring. This would pair beautifully with pan-roasted Dory with beurre blanc and roasted samphire or a pork cutlet with a salad of nectarines and fennel.

More about this wine

Attwoods took over the management of Glenlyon Estate on the outskirts of the Macedon Ranges in 2019. It’s a small two-hectare cool climate site at an elevation of 500 metres with 26-year-old Pinot Noir and Chardonnay vines standing in soils that are combination of quartz, basalt and clay soils.

Organically farmed, the yields here tend to be low, with generous natural acidity a given in most years. The fruit for this Chardonnay was handpicked, whole bunch pressed and barrel fermented with indigenous yeasts, with 30% of the barrels new for the season. Malolactic conversion took place in the spring, and the wine spent a total of 12 months in the barrels with minimal lees stirring before it was racked and blended into stainless steel for a six-month rest. The wine was then bottled unfined and unfiltered with a small addition of sulphur.

About this producer

Attwoods is a boutique producer of premium wines established in 2010 by its winemaker Troy Walsh and his wife Jane, the couple partnering with John Livingston in 2018 to bring increased business acumen into their growing operation.

At the heart of the Atwoods wines are three labour intensive close-planted cool-climate vineyards in Victoria’s Ballarat and Macedon Ranges. The focus is on minimal intervention wines from Burgundian varieties, with Troy favouring early picking, whole bunches and indigenous yeasts, the reds fermenting in large open fermenters and the whites in barrels.