Leeuwin Estate Art Series Chardonnay 2023
Leeuwin Estate Art Series Chardonnay 2023
$159, 13.5% alcohol, screwcap, Margaret River.
Once I’d finished tasting for the day I pulled this wine from the collection of opened bottles and settled into a glass or two with dinner. I’d already scored and written notes on the wine but you always learn more when you get to spend some downtime with a wine. Sometimes it’s when you switch off that you see the most. In any case what really struck me about this release, into my second glass, was how intense the fruit is. At this early stage of the wine’s life the intensity of fruit here is almost too much. This is a good thing in terms of the wine’s quality and potential longevity but I ended up switching to another wine because, right now, this wine is so intense that it feels demanding. There’s a line in an Alexander Pope poem that goes “How happy is the blameless vestal's lot”, which leads to the better known line “The world forgetting, by the world forgot / Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind”. Many nights I’m in the mood to be a blameless vestal with a spotless mind, and wish in a way to take things out rather than to stuff more in.
It mightn’t sound like it, but the above is all the review I need to write, and all I need to say. This wine is intense with Margaret River Chardonnay fruit. It crushes the finish with such emphasis that it feels demanding. It’s a wine of destiny and drama as much as it is of flint and peach. It has a start and a finish but everything feels like a crescendo. In fact, lightbulb moment and to borrow from the above, the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind starts with the finish and works back and around from there, and the experience of drinking this wine feels similar. In other words it’s a classic movie, in the form of a wine, in a glass. If you buy some you’ll have a great wine in your cellar.
97/100 points.
