Salo Chardonnay 2023

Written By Campbell Mattinson

If ever there was a quiet achiever of Australian wine it’s Salo. It’s been turning out gorgeous chardonnay, year after year, for the past sixteen years, the past eleven of them from the Full Moon Vineyard at Gladysdale in the Upper Yarra Valley. These chardonnays are just, simply, joyous wines. They are a side project of winemakers Steve Flamsteed and Dave Mackintosh, a side project that has dabbled in other varieties over the journey but now makes only one wine each year. There’s a lot to be said for this approach. When all your eggs are in one basket, chances are that you’ll make sure that it’s one hell of a great basket. The 2023 Salo Chardonnay (AU $55) is proof that beauty can be captured in liquid form. I generally detest the word soul when it’s aligned to wine, but the face this wine turns to the world is so soulful that it seems milked of tears. It’s a radiant wine. It’s sunshine on a sad face. It’s many things and it’s more.

See the formal review of this wine on The Winefront.

Campbell Mattinson

This post was written by Campbell Mattinson. Mattinson is a former chief editor of the Halliday Wine Companion book, former editor of Halliday magazine, former editor of Australian Sommelier Magazine and founder of The Winefront business. He is the author of five books on wine – four of which were bestsellers (The Wine Hunter, the Big Red Wine Book 2008, the Big Red Wine Book 2009, and the Big Red Wine Book 2010).

Mattinson is also the founder of the Mattinson Photography business.

Campbell Mattinson has been an independent journalist, wine critic and photographer for forty years. He’s the only Australian to have won the Australian Wine Communicator of the Year Award more than once. He’s a past winner of a Louis Roederer International Wine Media Award; is the author of the award-winning book The Wine Hunter; and is the author of the best-selling novel We Were Not Men. He’s also a winner of a St Kilda Film Festival Award (as writer-director) and is a former winner of the national Best Australian Sports Writing Award. In 2026 three of his photographs were short-listed for the World Food Photography Awards.

Campbell Mattinson, who is 100% independent, has tasted between 5000 and 10,000 wines each and every year for the past 25 years. He tastes blind, in comparative brackets, as often as is practicable.

Campbell Mattinson is a journalist, a photographer, a filmmaker and a wine critic. In all of these mediums his prime motive is to tell people's stories.

https://www.campbellmattinson.com
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