Giaconda Chardonnay Rick Kinzbrunner has stretched the limits of Australian chardonnay into a personal, but very traditional and heavily worked direction. Despite exhibiting remarkable complexity at a remarkably young age, it remains based around a solid core of ripe, concentrated fruit. None of the Giaconda chardonnays from the 1990s have yet reached their peak, so their longevity is unquestioned. The 1992 vintage is still evolving with classic Cru Chablis lines, while the 1993 and 1994 wines carry more weight and flesh. But it is really from 1996 onwards that Giaconda’s true potential is being realised, with explosively flavoured and ethereal wines which hold their own in very classy Burgundian company time and time again. Bannockburn Chardonnay It’s a reflection of how scarce is top-class Australian pinot noir that Gary Farr is not regularly listed amongst the makers of our finest chardonnay. But Bannockburn’s chardonnay, grown and made near Geelong in Victoria, has consistently performed at the highest level. Based around bright stonefruit, citrus and melon chardonnay flavours, it’s made in a generous, rich and complex style with a full complement of barrel ferment, malolactic and extended lees contact influences. Basically, it’s had the entire Burgundian textbook thrown at it. And for those with the money and the inclination, Farr reserves a small batch of especially concentrated fruit for his reserve SRH Chardonnay, a wondrously smooth and creamy wine which offers simply amazing flavour and layers of depth after three or four years in the bottle. Mount Langi Ghiran Shiraz Trevor Mast has become a standard-bearer for Australian wine in the US thanks to his brilliant Langi Shiraz, a wine which has come to exemplify the best in cool-climate Australian shiraz. Grown near Ararat in western Victoria, it has little, if nothing, in common with the oaky and jammy expressions so popular today; its oak fitting in neatly and tightly with the brooding, dark and complex expression of fruit it helps to support. At its best this wine presents classic dark blackberry and plum fruit with all the dark pepper and spice a shiraz freak could ever hope to experience, plus a sour-edged cherry note so suggestive of wild, briary small fruit. There’s no need to worry about longevity with Langi Shiraz, for none of them made this past decade are anything near their peak.
