Giant Steps Applejack Chardonnay 2025

Written By Campbell Mattinson
Bottle of Giant Steps Applejack Chardonnay 2025.

Giant Steps Applejack Chardonnay 2025
$95, 13% alcohol, screwcap, Yarra Valley.

I’m in the process of reviewing all the single vineyard [2025 Giant Steps – Winefront] releases but I thought that I’d step out of that process and sing from the rooftops about this Applejack Chardonnay 2025.

It’s difficult to imagine a more perfect Yarra Valley Chardonnay. It’s just simply gorgeous. It’s pure, silken, shot-through with flavour, tense, whispered with flint and just so wonderfully persistent. There’s an oyster-shell element to this; it feels highly controlled and itching to go wild at the same time. It’s a party in a suit, waiting for the formalities to be over. Give it a couple of years in the cellar and it will be fundamentally great. 96 points – Campbell Mattinson.

Read the full history of this vineyard: [Giant Steps Applejack – The Real First Vintage].

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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