2026 Dune Athabasca Chenin Blanc, McLaren Vale

Preserved lemon and white nectarine with apple, jasmine, ginger and chamomile. The palate is textural with fine acidity cutting through a pithy mid-palate, finishing with plenty of character and nuance. Drink now.

92 points Ryan Montgomery for James Suckling, September 2026

This Chenin Blanc from the sandy soils of Blewitt Springs has a distinctly fresh, aromatic character that blends flinty and saline flavours of grapefruit like citrus with red apples and floral herbs. It feels pure and fresh, with an appealing soft texture, subtle complexity and persistent yet mellow acidity.

This is the kind of wine that will quietly seduce you if care to pay attention to it yet is happy to sit in the background. Would sit nicely with lightly poached dory or emperor and daikon in a delicate lemongrass infused dashi, or slices of silken tofu topped with spanner crab, some shiro miso and a few pearls of finger lime.

More about this wine

The fruit was pressed to stainless steel vats with a portion of pressings and lees\ for fermentation with indigenous yeasts. The wine was then racked off heavy lees and transferred to French oak hogsheads and matured for six months, just enough to add texture and complexity without imposing a notable oak character on the wine.

About this producer

Dune is the project of brothers Duncan and Peter Lloyd, next generation of the Lloyd family whose name has long been synonymous with McLaren Vale wine through Coriole. Their focus is a single organically farmed vineyard in the Blewitt Springs subregion, a cooler, sandier corner of the Vale that retains natural acidity well and is proving an increasingly compelling home for varieties beyond the region's mainstream styles.