VASSE FELIX HEYTESBURY CHARDONNAY 2023

2026 White Wine of the Year & Chardonnay of the Year – James Halliday's Wine Awards 2025/2026

Long considered one of Margaret River’s top Chardonnays, this 2023 is a beauty. This wine walks a fine line between funkiness and purity. Quite a hedonistic wine with seductive ripe fruit flavours mixing with toasted nuts and smoke. Mouth-filling with detailed complexity.

Winery notes (2023 Vintage)
"Wonderfully complex, showing classic aromas of fine stone flint, lamb fat, and champignon, alongside custard lemon biscuits. Subtle hints of wet limestone and ocean spray evoke the region’s maritime influence, while a touch of white leather and sweet new straw bring savoury notes. Beautifully structured with long taut acid lines that provide strength and power. A fine, dry phenolic texture adds a layer of tension, complementing the wine’s depth. The palate evolves with lingering flavours of grapefruit, clotted cream and hints of ginger and lime leaf.

Our most unique small vineyard sections where the Gingin clone on specific aspect and soil, interplay in such a way to ignite very special varietal and wild yeast influence. A similar harvest time to the reasonably late year last year due to cold spring conditions. However, dry conditions and a sunny mild January saw ripening speed up with flavour and sugar reaching ideal ripeness with high acidity, so natural MLF was allowed to complete. Delicate flavours held tightly, resulting in beautiful restraint and balance. Hand-harvested, whole-bunches were pressed and transferred direct to barrel as unclarified juice. Fermented with natural yeasts from the vineyard, then nurtured in our cellar for 9 months in oak with some lees stirring, then 7 months harmonising in tank on full lees before filtering and bottling. 100% Gingin clone and true to HEYTESBURY perfume and structure. A savoury, delicate and beautifully structured wine, showcasing impressive complexity from a dry, cool year."

99/100 Jane Faulkner, James Halliday's Wine Companion (2023 Vintage)
"Score awarded by the Halliday tasting panel at the annual Awards judging. JF writes: When it comes to the best of the best, provenance is paramount. And taste memory utmost, especially when tasting Heytesbury made under Virginia Willcock’s tutelage (in ’26 she clocks up 20 years as chief winemaker at Vasse Felix, during which time she has transformed chardonnay in the region and beyond). Her influence is here in this wine, and ’23 will be known as one of the finest. It's hard to explain because it’s still very tightly wound, yet it has depth and volume. Oscillating between power and refinement, intensity and pure drinking pleasure. Grapefruit, Meyer lemon, a crushed oyster shell note, flinty, moreish sulphides, texture, mouth-watering, pure acidity and so much more besides. Nothing else to say other than that this is outstanding."

97+/100 Erin Larkin, RobertParker.com, Wine Advocate, June 2025 (2023 Vintage)
"The 2023 Heytesbury Chardonnay reveals all the poise and balance we expect from the season. It is awesome. This feels totally weighted on the back palate. The fruit intensity, coupled with powerful acidity and phenolic presence, fully penetrates beyond mere "flavor experience" and dives deep into the senses; the only option left is to ride that wave until it slowly fades. It's a persistent, sophisticated wine of latent power and patience. While this is released two years from harvest, it doesn't start to show its complex potential until around five years from harvest and far beyond that. It's slow to emerge and slow to age. This is a 100% Gingin clone Chardonnay, matured in French oak barriques, 52% new, for nine months, with seven months blended in tank prior to bottling."

97/100 Campbell Mattinson, The Wine Front, April 2025 (2023 Vintage)
"The line of acidity here is keen but it’s grapefruit-driven rather than pure citrus, which is a good if not great thing, and it has the scaffolding of both fruit and flint to make it work, as does the general infusion of creamy, cedarwood oak. This release of Heytesbury looks as though it’s been set for the long-term rather than for short-term enjoyment; it’s the kind of wine that folks will be marvelling over in twenty plus years, so outstanding is its quality. It’s powerful, it’s long, it’s nuanced and it’s complex. Stash some of this release. It’s a beauty, and will turn out magnificent."

97/100 James Suckling, JamesSuckling.com, October 2024 (2023 Vintage)
"An intensely complex and inviting nose with aromas of lemon curd, grapefruit rind, orange blossoms and gunsmoke. The medium-bodied palate has a textural mouthfeel and vivid acidity, showing notes of lime zest, mandarin pith, fresh pineapple and cookies. Multidimensional and giving with an underlying tension. Exceptional."

5 Stars & 96/100 Aaron Basher, The Real Review, December 2024 (2023 Vintage)
"Fine, fragrant and pithy aromas of grapefruit, struck match, melon skin, jasmine, just-ripe white peach, wet slate and green mango. Textured, focussed and layered, with concentration, purity and precision. Stone fruit, citrus, nutty oak, nougat and slatey, mineral acidity are all driving the palate. There’s texture, length and absolute class here."