This pack contains ..

1 × 2025 Nikau Home Block Pinot Noir, 1 x Nikau ‘Tolone’ White, 1 × 2024 Gippsland ‘Ceramic’ Chardonnay

2025 Pinot Noir

As usual the fruit was hand sorted and hand destemmed and then cold soaked for 48 hours so as to start fermentation very slowly. It spent 10 days in that state where it began ferment and received one light pump-over per day. It was then pressed to a small stainless steel tank to finish ferment as juice. This is where it sat un-disturbed for the next 9 months until bottling. It was bottled by hand and received an s02 addition of 10ppm at this time to protect from oxygen exposure.

 This years wine is an absolute beauty. It’s very well structured, has great energy and has all of the usual brambly Nikau Pinot Noir complexity coupled with exceptional balance.

 We could not be happier with this wine. I’d go as far as saying this is the best Pinot to be produced from the Nikau site to date and we are very excited to share it !

590 bottles produced

2025 Nikau ‘Tolone’ White

 As with the Nikau Pinot the aim here is to do as little as possible and let the fruit be what it wants to be. There were 24 hours of skin contact with a very light maceration.The reason for this is that I believe the skins of any fruit hold some of the information and story of the place, the soils, and the weather that it is exposed to. By emitting the skins totally I feel that you are losing some of the story and terrior.

As for the winemaking, after the cold soak as whole bunches it was pressed directly to a small stainless tank for a long cool ferment (it is usually mid April by this time) There it sat for 8 months on full solids without being disturbed at all.It was then bottled by hand directly from that tank (without racking or moving the tank).

It has spent a further 18 months in bottle since composing itself.

The wine seems very refined. It is a dainty 10.9% alcohol but you wouldn’t know it, It has incredible structure and presence.

It is an elegant and haunting thing of beauty (I don’t say such things about my own wines lightly). It has so much vitality and freshness and is a very individual wine in it’s on right.

 290 bottles Produced

2024 Gippsland ‘Ceramic’ Chardonnay

Sometimes good things only happen once. This is one of those things…

20 bottles of this phenominal cuveé pulled from the cellar !

In 2024 we were lucky enough to get access to some exceptional Chardonnay fruit from the legendary Nicholson River vineyard.This vineyard was instrumental in putting Gippsland Chardonnay on the map in the 80’s, 90’s and 2000’s (just ask Max Allen) and now has an average vine age of 47 years.

Not that I am one for wine judging results but, notably, this vineyard has produced what was voted Victoria’s best white wine no less than 9 times over the last few decades. Needless to say I jumped at the chance to make wine from this fruit !

The vineyard sits on the banks of the Nicholson river. The vines are dry grown and farmed using sustainable, organic practices (not certified). The soils as you would expect are alluvial gravels and clays (from silt). It is cropped extremely low at approximately 0.8t to the acre and is entirely comprised of the p58 clone. This clone was one of the first Chardonnay clones brought into Australia, in 1958 in fact (from France). It is itself naturally low cropping and generally produces a very fine, complex wine leaning toward the lemon and lime spectrum.

We picked the fruit around 11.8b and it was right on the money. The fruit was lightly macerated and then put into the cool room overnight to chill. It was pulled out in the morning and pressed directly to stainless steel tank for the duration of fermentation.

Once ferment had finished the wine was racked to one single 650L ceramic egg for 9 months elevage. The wine was then bottled by hand directly from the egg in late November at which time 10ppm of so2 was added to reduce oxygen exposure.

I could not be happier with this wine. There are some wines that just look incredible from day one, this was certainly one of those wines but looking at it now it is beggining to really show it’s pedigree ! If you’ve got the patience put a bottle away and you will certainly not regret it.

It’s a stunningly pure, delicate and complex expression of Chardonnay from an exceptional vineyard.

I could not be happier with this wine. It is the stuff Chardonnay dreams are made of !