2025 Quealy Musk Creek Chardonnay, Mornington Peninsula

Light bright yellow with a butterscotch bouquet that evidences malolactic; gentle oak, spices, nuts and nougat; the palate round and full, generous and backed with drying and gently grippy tannins. Attractive wine, fresh and bouncy, with energy—if not great complexity as yet, but that will come. Drink to 2035.

92 points Huon Hooke for The Real Review, October 2026

If anything, a bit more time in bottle will allow this to settle, as it’s a bit nervy and gangly now, even if it comes full of good flavours: lemon and limes, ginger ale and honeycomb, some praline with plenty of spices and woodsy notes. It’s tight and frisky thanks to the acidity, with some sticky phenolics, so assuage that with food if you crack open a bottle today. Drink to 2033.

90 points Jane Faulkner for Halliday Wine Companion, October 2026

From the near-ideal 2025 season, the fruit for this wine came from a 0.4-ha dry grown Main Ridge block planted in the mid-1990s. The handpicked fruit was whole bunch pressed and fermented with endemic yeasts in French oak puncheons of which a quarter were new. The wine then rested for ten months in the barrels before the parcels were blended and bottled.

About this producer

Established in the early 1990s by Kathleen Quealy and Kevin McCarthy, their son Tom McCathy has been the chief winemaker since 2019, working the solid foundation his parents set up for him and continuing the house style which includes no pressings (and therefore no need for fining), no acidification, low and late sulphur additions and a reliance on old oak.

Four vineyards lie at the heart of the portfolio. The Home Block in Balnarring was planted in 1982 and has some of the oldest Pinot Noir vines on the Peninsula. This is also the home to Quealy’s oldest Pinot Grigio, and the aromatic varieties of Moscato Giallo, Friulano and Riesling, as well as some more recent plantings of Malvasia and Ribolla Gialla. A little Chardonnay from the original plantings also remains.

The Musk Creek vineyard was planted in 1997. Perched atop Main Ridge, overlooking Westernport Bay and the heads, it’s the coolest site in the portfolio, bestowing exceptional late-ripening Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris. On the red soils of Merricks North, there’s the Tussie Mussie vineyard, and back in Balnarring we have Campbell & Christine, again planted by Quealy (for the owners) in 1994.

Each of these sites is managed entirely by the Quealy team and, with the current exception of Musk Creek, all are farmed organically. Quealy’s full-time viticulturist Lucas Blanck (son of organic Alsace vigneron Frédéric Blanck) has overseen a major renovation of the Balnarring home vineyard that underpins the quality we’re seeing in today’s wines, including the implementation of organic certification, dryland farming, a rotational cover crop program and replanting nearly 20% of that vineyard.