April Food Match Winner
Congratulations Mr David Hawkins – you’ve won a 6-pack of premium quality wine valued at over $250! Your suggestion of Fresh Tasmanian Oysters with a chilli and lime dressing followed by pan seared swordfish with a summer mango salad and cheese platter to go with a bottle of Leconfield Syn Cuvee Blanc NV was so delicious it had all our mouths watering.
April Survey Results
In our April online survey we asked you what your white wine preference was and what you thought about Chardonnay. The results proved extremely useful and prompted a response from Tasting Panel member and winemaker Christian Gaffey.
We were pleased to find that:
• While Sauvignon Blanc came out as the top white wine preference overall, Chardonnay came in as number two and there was only a small margin of difference between the two varieties.
• A number of the regions that respondents most associated with Chardonnay feature in many of the Chardonnays we offer. These include regular deliveries as well as catalogue packs and email offers.
Click here to try some medal-winning quality examples of the variety.
• In terms of the changing style of Chardonnay, 55.4% of respondents indicated that they had noticed a change in the style of the variety in recent years. To shed some light on why this is so, Tasting Panel member Christian Gaffey had this to say;
“Chardonnay is experiencing an identity crisis which is somewhat caused by its own success. Chardonnay is one of the few varieties that can be stylistically influenced by winemakers to make a wine tight, lean and delicate through to big, bold, rich and super ripe. In the 1980s and 1990s the meteoric rise of Australian wine was arguably off the back of the latter style mentioned above. We made Chardonnays that were super ripe, buttery and full of oak as this is what the market at the time was looking for. Perhaps we overdid it but people tired of this style and Chardonnay is now approached with a desire more for elegance and structure rather than the obvious wines of their dinosaur predecessors. Less oak, no secondary fermentation and much lower alcohol is the objective. Harmony and balance is the key. Chardonnay is a noble variety and any other white variety is the poor cousin.”