Praeter Magpie Block Chardonnay 2025

Praeter Magpie Block Chardonnay 2025

Magpie Block is an E-NE slope of sandy loam with ironstone, quartz over limestone and clay. It is situated at 220m above sea level at the foothills of the Mount Lofty Ranges. The vineyard is dry-grown and I have been farming it organically since taking over. 

The 2025 growing season was warm and dry, one of the earliest harvests on record, but lower yields and careful management allowed for healthy vine balance to be maintained.  The resulting wines have a remarkable freshness and clarity, allowing the natural minerality and structure of the site to shine through.

The fruit was whole-bunch pressed and racked to French oak hogsheads (25% new) with full solids.  The wines underwent malolactic fermentation and remained on lees for 10 months before blending and bottling.

"There's more limestone here" - Large quips, and it's evident in the shape and line of this comparatively to the weight of the Truscott block. Cooling fruits, in that lovely green melon, honeydew, quartz and spearmint vein becoming richer with air, plumes of balanced reduction, in-built and dialled. The palate is elegantly poised, that limestone tension drives through a core of judiciously weighted fruit, fanning and with the faintest grip of phenolic goodness on the end. Excellent

"Stylish chardonnay. Measured and elegant. Flavours of grilled peach, vanilla bean, mineral, slate and tonic water merge with a particularly umami-like expression of cedar. This is one of those chardonnays where you keep noticing something new or different as you work your way through a couple of glasses. It’s juicy but it has tension and it finishes with excellent persistence. It will improve over the next year or two as well. Excellent." 94 Points - Campbell Mattinson, The Wine Front