Moss Wood : Chardonnay 2022

The 2022 Chardonnay opens with a nose redolent of white chocolate praline, roasted/salted/crushed cashews, orange oil, vanilla pod and wafer. In the mouth, the phenolics almost balance the opulent fruit; this is a huge, pillowy wine with substance and volume. It tastes like custard cooking on the stove smells—warming, soft and rich. The combination of a warm season and the opulence of the Moss Wood Chardonnay style has produced a wine with ample, capacious, billowing flavor. 14% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.

Creamy nougat, with a simmering, flinty minerality and lemon curd on the nose. There’s gentle yet opulent oak spice, a little char and pretty white florals lifting things up to craft an elegant and refined picture. In its youth the oak is still persistent, but time should nestle this further into a fruit core of billowy white peach. Polished and glossy tannins, and a precise, manicured finish. Full malolactic ferment in 54% new oak and matured in barrel for 16 months.

This is a large-framed Chardonnay, doing its best to burst from a mid-weight corset of tension. The oak is lustrous, while the creamy core is generous, indelibly stamped with nougatine and toasted nuts, as one would expect from a more rambunctious expression. Yet the tension remains. The belt of cedar across the mid-palate screams the need to cellar. For the mid-term. Aromas of green fig, yellow plum, cantaloupe and oatmeal, all attractive. I look forward to tasting this in eight years’ time. Drinkable now, but best from 2028. Screw cap.