2024 Kooyong Faultline Chardonnay, Mornington Peninsula

It’s tough tasting this because I want to drink it and share the bottle around with friends over lunch or dinner. It’s harmonious, as the best wines tend to be, and sure, Faultline has always been a high-end chardonnay, but latterly there seems to be an extra level of detail or focus. It’s a precision offering full of excellent citrusy flavours and superfine texture, with the oak superbly integrated. It’s mouth-watering thanks to the acidity, with the finish long and satisfying. You’d call this savoury, definitely complex and a cracking good drink. Drink to 2035.

98 points, Special Value & Chardonnay of the Year Halliday Wine Companion, August 2026

Lovely, lifted aromas of just-ripe white stone fruit, grapefruit pith, grilled nuts, nougat, white flowers, oyster brine and wet slate. There's plenty to like here. Focused and with great concentration, mouth-feel and presence. Stone fruit, citrus, pithy and with a shapely amount of grip and very smart length. Seamless. Drink to 2036.

96 points Aaron Brasher for The Real Review, July 2026

A contrasting style to its Farrago sibling, Faultline brings a little more weight and depth to its Chardonnay fruit. You sense more presence in the glass. Raises the role of lemon citrus, grapefruit, quince and Asian pear on the aroma compared to more subtle stone fruits, with background almond biscuit and earth savouriness. Delivers subtle elegance and precision with a firm citrus fruit intensity running deep.  There is the promise of so much more still being held in reserve with this wine, including age-worthiness.

96 points Jeni Port for Wine Pilot, July 2026

From a style, length and complexity viewpoint, this wine is outstanding. It throws just enough flint notes, has a brine-and-mineral sensibility, carries white peach, grapefruit pulp and nectarine flavours, and soars long through the finish. Sparks of nougat, cooked apple, toast and lemonade fire persuasively as it rattles into the distance.

95 points Campbell Mattinson for The Wine Front, June 2026

So intense and concentrated! Golden and glistening. Mango, cinnamon, honey and apricot. A luscious overspill of fruit and succulence. The structure, line and exquisite detail, like Van Gogh’s pencil and reed-pen drawings of Montmajour, has an almost feverishly monastic discipline.

17.5/20 points Tamlyn Currin for Jancis Robinson, May 2026

Kooyong is a specialist Pinot Noir and Chardonnay producer based at Tuerong on the Mornington Peninsula, where the Gjergja family has farmed 40 hectares of estate vines since 1996.

The Faultline is one of five distinct single blocks vinified separately. This block covers just half a hectare of 28-year-old Chardonnay vines on sedimentary soils with less ironstone and more deep clay than the neighbouring blocks, a profile that delivers an earthy depth and fuller palate character than others in the range.

The fruit was gently whole-bunch pressed into 350-litre French oak barrels of which 20% were new and fermented with indigenous yeasts. The wine rested on lees without stirring for eleven months and was racked once just prior to being bottled without fining and with minimal filtration.