Lethbridge Chardonnay

Lethbridge Chardonnay

Lethbridge Chardonnay is made with fruit from the Suma Park Vineyard on the Bellarine Peninsula.  The soils are a shallow sandy clay over a limestone base and the wine produced from this site always has an oyster shell minerality.  The juice undergoes spontaneous fermentation in 100% new French oak and is matured in approx 50% new French oak puncheons.  This vintage has undergone a natural malo-lactic fermentation, although this does not happen in some years, we let nature decide.   We can do this because making Chardonnay with Geelong fruit is very special.  Geelong is considered the Goldilocks region for Chardonnay,  the cool climate means that we can ripen the fruit, with no fear of entering the over-ripe  ‘tropical fruit’  spectrum and we know that the acidity will persist throughout the critical ripening period.  The chardonnay pendulum of ‘big and buttery’ or ‘lean and mean’ is inconsequential to us, at Lethbridge we cast the trends aside and focus on delicious. This Chardonnay should develop over the next 5-10 years in the cellar, retaining acidity and the fruit flavours developing into grilled nuts and baked nectarines.

Lethbridge Wines is a boutique wine producer specialising in highly terroir-driven wines from some of the best vineyards in Victoria’s Geelong region, chosen after an exhaustive search in the mid 1990’s. Owner-winemakers Ray Nadeson and Maree Collis are not your average winemakers of a boutique winery. Both were initially trained as research scientists and hold PhD degrees in chemistry and medicine, respectively. While combining their scientific careers with winemaking, Maree and Ray completed the winemaking degree at Charles Sturt University. Ray states, “winemaking is not really that different to science, both are creative and both involve 99% perspiration, 1% inspiration”.

With total wine production capacity capped at 3,000 cases, the focus is on quality and individuality, with a strong emphasis on capturing the local terroirs. As well as understanding the importance of terroir, the partners have built a unique straw- bale winery, designed to recreate the controlled environment of cellars and caves in Europe. Winemaking is no less ecological: hand-picking, indigenous yeast fermentation, small open fermenters, pigeage (foot-stomping) and minimal handling of the wines throughout the maturation process are all part and parcel of the highly successful Lethbridge approach.

Lethbridge is a 5 Red Star Winery that has built up a cult following in Australia and their wines are rarely seen outside of Melbourne; this is a great opportunity to sample these award winning wines from one of the few overseas allocations.

To see our full range of lethbridge wines go to http://www.auswinesonline.co.uk/product-category/lethbridge/

For more information on gthe winery go to http://www.lethbridgewines.com

Lethbridge Chardonnay