2025 Forest Hill Estate Chardonnay, Mount Barker

Lots of flavour and character here. Vanilla cream meets peach and nectarine leads the perfume with dashes of cinnamon and salted pistachio. The palate a little more caramel and toffee apple, a gingery undertow, more of the stone fruits and vanilla cream. Soft and supple in texture with a long afterglow of spice and riper-fruit character. Richness and charm with a pluck of freshness uplifting. It should lush up nicely with time in cellar in the medium-term. Drink to 2031.

92 points Mike Bennie for Halliday Wine Companion, May 2026

Bright and elegant, this Chardonnay opens white flowers, citrus peel, nectarines and toasted nougat. The generous palate reveals layers of grapefruit and white stone fruit, supported by fine texture and complexity. Natural acidity carries the wine through to a long, lingering finish.

When you head into the kitchen, consider matching its creamy texture. Try with Cantonese-style pan-fried scallops with ginger, spring onion and sweet corn purée, or tarragon roasted chicken with morels.

More about this wine

2025 was warm and very dry across the Great Southern, but Mount Barker avoided heat extremes. Significant rains in late summer raised concerns but ended up boosting vine health at the right time.

This wine is a blend of three parcels of the Forest Hill Vineyard, Blocks 8 and 9 planted in 1985, and the more recent Highbury Fields, and a clonal combination of the Gin Gin and Bernards 76, 95 and 96.

The hand sorted and chilled was part whole bunch pressed with high solids into a mixture French oak barriques, hogsheads and puncheons of which 20% were new. Fermentation took place at cool temperatures with indigenous yeasts, with light stirring post-primary fermentation, and a small portion of barrels allowed malolactic fermentation. The blended and filtered wine was bottled in December 2025.

About Forest Hill

Forest Hill Vineyard is a family-owned business established in 1965 by Betty and Tony Pearse with guidance from the WA Department of Agricultural. It was the first commercial vineyard to planted in the Great Southern, laying foundations for a region that is today widely recognised for wines of elegance and purity. The current owners have been custodians of the historic property since 1996.

Located in the subregion of Mount Barker, the vineyard sits at 220m to 240m altitude approximately 40km from the coast. This part of the Great Southern enjoys long, temperate growing seasons with significant diurnal temperature variations, and sits at the northern edge of the Nornalup geological complex, a mix of ancient rock types that over time have weathered into deep laterite blankets, leaving ironstone gravel as the dominant soil type across the vineyard. Clay content varies from one block to another, alongside differing concentrations of gravel and loam.

Many of the original dry-grown vines planted in the 1960s continue to thrive today and remain the foundation of the wines produced. New vines are propagated from this heritage and complimented by more recent clonal material. The property is farmed with organic principals and with practical aspects of regenerative farming such as incorporation of grazing livestock, multi-species cover crops and mulch/compost applications: happy vines make good wines.