Savaterre Chardonnay 2024

Savaterre Chardonnay 2024
AU$120, 13.5% alcohol, screwcap, Beechworth.
97 points – Campbell Mattinson.

This review was part of an article on Keppell Smith and Savaterre.

I realised, after I’d consumed my first glass of a Savaterre Chardonnay in over a decade, that what you pay for is a relationship. In this case, it’s the relationship between fruit, acidity, and texture, though it could too be between Keppell, his patch and time. There’s flavour in this wine, of course, indeed lots of it, and yet it all tastes like the purest water flowing under the longest bridge. Each aspect is only beautiful because of the others. Keppell once said to me, in the early days of his Savaterre endeavour, that it was important to keep the oak levels a little higher than ideal, because it helped make people notice the wines. Those days are clearly long over. The purity of this wine has such a brightness that it could blind the weariest of drivers. In fact, if this wine was a song, it would be sung by a choir of children. There’s hope in this wine’s lungs. It’s fancy because it tastes so free. A lot of wines, even very good ones, feel as though they have an outboard motor attached, and that this motor is beating below for all it’s worth. These such wines leave you annoyed and impressed at the same time; drinking them is like listening to a motor mower cut manicured lines of grass. This Savaterre Chardonnay is not one of these wines. Its energy is calm. Its calm is strength. Its strength is soothing.

97 points – Campbell Mattinson