Penfolds Yattarna V Chardonnay
Bottles of the beautiful Penfolds Yattarna V Chardonnay.
Penfolds Yattarna V Chardonnay
A$875, 13% alcohol, screwcap, (various regions, see below).
I first tasted Yattarna V Chardonnay when it was unlabelled and unnamed, in May 2022 – prior to its release in March/April 2023 – and wrote on The Winefront that it was both “tight as a drum” and “immeasurably complex”, as you’d expect of a wine that presumably had only just been blended and bottled. Yattarna V Chardonnay is a blend of several vintages of Yattarna: namely 2011, 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2021 (hence the V, aka “five”). Given that this initial tasting was in May 2022, the Yattarna 2021 component was still (more than) a year out from its own individual release.
This timing meant that V reached the market before the 2021 vintage of Yattarna did, in its own right. A quirky answer for a quiz night could be: the first way anyone could buy the 2021 Yattarna was inside a multi-vintage blend at A$875.
I don’t often get to revisit such unique wines as this, but I tasted it again in June 2026. Only 2200 bottles were produced, which is an incredibly small number in any winemaking context, but especially given that Penfolds serves the world.
The regional sourcing of Penfolds Yattarna V isn't listed anywhere, or not that I can find. It can, though, be worked out. The grape sourcing of each of the vintages involved is publicly recorded. Collate them and you have a single wine drawn from four regions across four states: the Derwent Valley, Central Highlands and Coal River Valley in Tasmania; the Adelaide Hills in South Australia; Henty in Victoria; and Tumbarumba in New South Wales. The Derwent Valley and the Adelaide Hills appear in four of the five vintages. They're the spine of this wine.
In the 2022 tasting I wrote: “This wine is straw-coloured at most, straw-green even, and indeed sits on the paler side of that description, which is amazing given the age of the components. I’m not certain that it’s absolutely cohesive (at this early stage) but it’s genuinely fascinating and, I would argue, beautiful.”
At the 2026 tasting I wrote: “Noticeably oystery. Straw coloured. Substantial texture. Fresh and developed at once. Musk. Tang. Yellow stone grit. A balloon of flavour but honeyed and long. It was tight when I first tasted this, pre-release. It’s honed but it has relaxed and extended. The gentle oyster-like notes of this wine’s youth now inform this wine so well, and so clearly. There’s an argument to say that this is a perfect Chardonnay.” 97 points – Campbell Mattinson.
See also [Penfolds Yattarna 2011 Chardonnay], which is a component of the above.
See also [Penfolds Yattarna Reviews on The Winefront 1998-Current]
See also [Penfolds Yattarna Chardonnay 2024 Review]
