Nutbourne Vineyards Chardonnay 2018

A crisp dry white wine with complexity and character. Notes of apple and tropical fruits with butter and vanilla on the finish, balanced by relatively high acidity. The wine has undergone gentle pressing and slow cool fermentation, followed by malolactic fermentation, then six months in two-year-old French oak.

Vines were first planted at Nutbourne in 1979 by one of the early pioneers of wine grape growing in this country. Since 1991 it has been owned, managed and expanded by the Gladwin family. The “Terroir” at Nutbourne is a unique and ideal wine growing environment – a warm microclimate protected by the South Downs, gentle south-facing slopes and the same fertile green sand soil as the Champagne region in France. There are 26 acres under vine.

JancisRobinson.com review: “Tasted blind. Crackling with bright, lime-green, apple-sherbet energy. The acidity buzzes across the palate and there is a kind of light-filled iridescence that somehow puts me in mind of a dragonfly, in summer, darting around the surface of a cold, stony stream. Good length and persistence. Packed with flavour – kiwi, green apples, greengage, lime. I loved this. GV” 16.5 (TC)

JRC21