Decades Chardonnay 2024

Written By Campbell Mattinson
Bottle of Flamsteed's Decades Chardonnay 2024.

Decades Chardonnay 2024
AU$80, 13% alcohol, screwcap, Tasmania.

Decades Chardonnay is the fruit of a friendship – between Steve Flamsteed and Brad Rogers – that goes back, as the name gives away, decades. The two have bought a vineyard in the Coal River Valley of southern Tasmania. This is the second release of a Decades Chardonnay.

For all of this wine’s power and length, finesse is its main calling card. It's ultra fine-boned. It tastes of lemon, thistles, white peach, almond cream, hay and honey, with a finish like bacon and cream in a pan seeded with fennel. The texture, throughout, is satin. I tasted this wine over the course of an afternoon and it barely budged — though the sunshine of it did creep up over the horizon; cool, modest, sure, blue light in with the yellow. This wine, I am quite certain, will develop into the most commanding of chardonnays.

96 points – Campbell Mattinson

See also [Best Australian Chardonnay]

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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