Print this Wine         1997 Mount Horrocks Unoaked Chardonnay   WATERVALE, CLARE VALLEY                 January Release   Chardonnay       Stephanie Toole, proprietor/Winemaker of Mount Horrocks is always looking towards pushing the boundaries. Her "Cordon Cut" dessert style has won great acclaim wherever and whenever it has been tasted. More recently her Shiraz has turned heads. Now it is the turn for this superb wine. Last years wine was a great success and perhaps this vintage takes the wine up another notch. Too many Australian producers have used inferior, high yielding, lower ripeness level Chardonnay parcels in the Unoaked styles. This has led to a pronounced degree of scepticism in the marketplace. It is quite obvious that no such occurrence has taken place in the production of this wine. The same quality fruit has been carefully selected and the components in this wine have been chosen for the volume of ripe Chardonnay varietal character. The nose is full of peaches and some tropical fruits such as guava and passionfruit with the addition of some lifted floral notes which make for a very appealing and tempting wine. The absence of oak merely focuses your attention on the different nuances of fruit characters, and is not really missed at all. Again the fruit cocktail persists on the palate with the rich nature of the stonefruit characters really coming to the fore. There is noticeable sweetness, however this is not unfermented grape juice, this is fully ripe and immensely flavored grapes. The sweetness is checked on the back of the palate with lingering acid that is crisp and lively. The structure of the wine is so clearly defined there is every reason to suggest that the wine will age and develop in the bottle for quite a few years. Somehow I don’t think many bottles will remain in the cellar more than a few months. The wine is drinking so superbly at the moment it should be enjoyed. The lively finish to the wine and its slightly lighter weight in the mid palate compared to a barrel fermented Chardonnay makes this wine more versatile when it comes to food matching. It would be ideal with seafood, either crusteacea or the more delicate white fleshed fish, and it has enough concentration of fruit flavor to match up to the richness of roast chicken.

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