2025 Tapanappa Tiers Vineyard Chardonnay, Adelaide Hills

Increasingly, I am allowing Aussie Chardonnays a little more time on opening, time to loosen up, to release some inbuilt tension and open to a full reveal. Top Aussie Chardonnays like Tiers call for it. Try and make it a rule and see if it works for you. With time opened, there is a growing warmth to the ’25 Tiers, it’s still quite taut, but it opens up nicely with scents of dusty honeysuckle, nectarine, white peach, citrus, quince and nuts. It’s a complex, fine textured Adelaide Hills Chardonnay off 44-year-old vines which saw fermentation in French oak barriques (one third new) and was aged on full lees. It’s also from a warm vintage, but don’t expect a huge effect on acidity – it’s as brisk as they come.  Brings an inviting thread of biscuits, grilled nuts, clotted cream, quince, melon and citrus to the palate alongside a grapefruit pithiness and green apple crunchiness. Leaves a concentrated, well composed impression in its youth which will come further into bloom with time. It’s very much early days for this wine. Drink 2026-2038.

95 points Jeni Port for Wine Pilot, April 2026

The Tiers Vineyard was planted in 1979 — the first in the Adelaide Hills since the nineteenth century — with heritage clones of unknown origin, possibly tracing back to the earliest Chardonnay introductions into Australia. The vines grow on their own roots, a rarity in modern viticulture, on podsolised red-brown earths over schist and sandstone. They are the foundation of what Brian Croser has spent his career building, and they still produce some of the most compelling Chardonnay in the country.

The 2025 vintage was the warmest and driest on record at the winery — a marked contrast to the preceding run of cool seasons. The fruit responded with more immediate generosity than usual, though the old vines and the site's natural tension kept the wine grounded. Whole bunch pressed to French oak, one third new, fermented slowly through autumn and left on full lees until bottling. Unhurried from start to finish.

Pale with a green tinge. The nose is intense and detailed — grapefruit, bitter lemon, a flinty mineral edge and hints of marzipan. The palate is tightly structured but not austere, with good mid-palate volume, chalky textures and a long, resonant acidity that carries through to a finish of real persistence and precision. This is a wine that will reveal more with time than it gives away now.

Crab, scallops, a well-made risotto with good ingredients, or aged hard cheese. Perfect on its own too — this is a wine worth sitting with.

Drink 2027 through 2035.