TOLPUDDLE CHARDONNAY 2025

Winery notes (2025 Vintage)
"In Tasmania’s south-east, the Coal River Valley’s climate is extreme for viticulture. Rainfall is low, with approximately 500mm per year. This cool but dry climate allows grapes to ripen slowly without disease pressure, resulting in grapes of great aromatic intensity. Planted in 1988 to Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, the vineyard is on a gentle north- east facing slope. The soil is light silica sands over sandstone, and of moderate vigour, ensuring well balanced vines.

Powerful yet precise, with impressive concentration and energy. Tightly coiled at first, revealing white flower and jasmine, layered with a complex, savoury lees character. The palate carries weight and extract while remaining clean and driven by a firm core of acidity. Lime zest and tonic notes bring freshness and subtle astringency to the finish.

All fruit was hand-picked, whole bunch pressed, and fermented in French oak. The wine spent ten months in barrel with gentle stirring as required, then rested in tank on lees for a further four months."

97/100 CampbellMattinson.com (2025 Vintage)
"This edition of Tolpuddle Chardonnay is a classic in the making. It has three key features: unforced complexity, an impression of effortlessness, and outstanding length. It tastes of iron, grilled peach, lemon, tonic water and nougat, though there’s an underpinning of umami and a subtle flintiness in play too. It’s all quite exquisite. It’s all quite fabulous."

97+/100 Dave Brookes, James Halliday's Wine Companion (2025 Vintage)
"Tight and intricately detailed, as always, with bright citrus, peach and white nectarine fruits overseen by a mist of flint and struck-march complexity. Hints of grilled hazelnuts, almond butter, vanillin oak, clover blossom, crushed riverstone, crème fraîche, ozone, oatmeal and sea spray. Lightly textural, with a beautiful taut mineral line, the flavours precise and drawn out along its length. This has a tight mineral cadence, a touch of apple-skin pithiness, preserved lemon, nougat and a pristine, sustained finish with a flair of umami. This is a producer and a site that is in the finest of form. No wonder the French are nervous – once again, world-class Australian chardonnay."

96/100 Tom Kilne, WinePilot.com, September 2026 (2025 Vintage)
"This is a wine that has, since Tolpuddle's first release in 2013, become one of the benchmarks for Australian Chardonnay – taut, mineral, and precise in a way few sites in the country can match. There's such allure to the perfume as the wine relaxes in the glass. Cashew cream and white flowers hover above pure and precise fruit – white peach, salted grapefruit, preserved lemon, makrut lime. There's some saline oyster shell minerality and whispers of fine cedar bringing savoury complexity. The trademark flinty reduction permeates but not aggressively at this stage of the wine's life. On the palate, there's both power and precision with a lovely creamy texture cut up by tensile saline acidity and chalky phenolic drive. The fruit notes mirror the nose, carried very long with that classic Tolpuddle crystalline drive and some preserved lemon brininess drenching the close with salinity. Top flight Tolpuddle Chardonnay here. Power and precision in equal measure, and a balance that will see it age brilliantly."

96/100 Jeni Port, WinePilot.com, September 2026 (2025 Vintage)
"The Tolpuddle Vineyard, south of Hobart, has a long history dating back to 1988. In 2011, under new owners Michael Hill-Smith and Martin Shaw, it has taken a major step towards putting Tasmanian Chardonnay and Pinot Noir on the world stage. A good ’25 vintage, dry with above average temperatures, has produced a deeply complex young Chardonnay. Arrives in richly detailed aromas in yellow peach, nectarine, hints of guava, lemon curd with a cashew-rich nuttiness. A tightly-coiled and thrilling wine, sunny and bright and more-ish. The palate is well composed, integrated and seamless, in whole sways of citrus, stone fruits joined by almond meal, biscuit, pineapple skin with a finely nuanced ribbon of vanillin oak. There is much more to build upon as it starts its journey. Give it time."

95/100 Gary Walsh, The Wine Front, September 2026 (2025 Vintage)
"As ever with Tolpuddle it’s a tight and racy wine, offering savoury nuance, plenty of flint and struck match, a saline oyster shell character, spicy cinnamon oak, fennel, and a bright and tangy acid bite. It’s not huge on flavour, but does have a lime, white peach and green olive and a little creamy almond richness. The finish is bright and long, with citrus rind and a quinine bite to close. It’s a style that will tickle the fancy of many, for sure. It builds some weight with time in the glass, so I’d suggest there’s a fair bit more to come here once it settles into bottle."