Umamu Estate

Margaret River Chardonnay 2018

Released 23rd August 2021. It was a Chardonnay from the Margaret River that brought my parents to fall in love with this stunning wine region in Western Australia back in the 1980s, and our own vineyard in the late 90s. So we are immensely proud to release our own Margaret River Hallmark Chardonnay 2018 from20-year old vines.
The vineyard was blessed with ideal growing and ripening conditions in 2018. Weather was close to average and very typical of Margaret River's mediterranean climate, cool wet winter and mild dry summer. Harvest decisions wereplenty and left to optimise quality.
It was a Chardonnay from the Margaret River that brought my parents to fall in love with this stunning wine region in Western Australia back in the 1980s, and our own vineyard in the late 90s. So we are immensely proud to release our own Margaret River Hallmark Chardonnay 2018 from20-year old vines that Dad planted.
The vineyard was blessed with ideal growing and ripening conditions in 2018. Weather was close to average and very typical of Margaret River's mediterranean climate, cool wet winter and mild dry summer. Harvest decisions wereplenty and left to optimise quality.
This wine has been givenmuch hands-on TLC from pruning to leaf plucking to hand harvesting. Hand harvesting gives us ultimate selection of grapes and thus quality. We harvest in bunches so the fruit skin is not punctured (compared to machine harvesting which harvests each grape off the stem) and left intact and there is no juice contact with skin, preventing unwanted phenolic (contributes to bitterness) being picked up. Fruit can then be chilled down post harvest and pressed cold which is ideal. Gentle pressing of the whole bunch using stalks to assist drainage and reduce extraction of phenolics makes for a fine Chardonnay. Of course the balance to this is the much higher costs for labour and time. Hand picking has been an annual ritual!