Moss Wood 2021 Chardonnay
| Wine Facts | |
|---|---|
| Median Harvest Date | 24th March, 2021 |
| Mean Harvest Ripeness | 13.4°Be |
| Yield | 4.98 t/ha |
| Growing Season Ave Temperature | 18.6⁰C |
| Number of hours accrued between 18 and 28⁰C | 1206 hours |
| Number of hours above 33⁰C | 21 hours |
| Days Elapsed between Flowering and Harvest | 137 days |
| Bottled | 3rd August, 2022 |
| Released | 1st September, 2022 |
| Alcohol | 14.00 % |
Wine Facts
-
Median Harvest Date
24th March, 2021
-
Harvest Ripeness
13.4°Be
-
Yield
4.89 t/ha
-
Weather Data
Growing season Ave Temperature - 18.6⁰C
Number of hours accrued between 18° and 28⁰C – 1206 hours
Number of hours above 33⁰C – 21 hours
-
Days Elapsed between Flowering and Harvest
137 days
-
Bottled
3rd August, 2022
-
Released
1st September, 2022
-
Alcohol
14.00%
WA Wine Review 2024
Ray Jordan “Moss Wood is a family-owned wine company and a pioneer of the Margaret River region. Planted in 1969, Moss Wood is an important founding estate of Margaret River. Clare and Keith Mugford, as viticulturalists, winemakers and proprietors, have been tending the vineyard and making wine at Moss Wood…
Moss Wood 2021 Chardonnay – Bob Campbell, The Real Review
Rich, mouth-filling chardonnay with peach, butterscotch, oyster shell, sizzled butter and spicy oak flavours supported by just enough vibrant acidity to prevent any suggestion of cloying. January, 2023
Moss Wood 2021 Chardonnay – Casey Bryan, Travelling Corkscrew
What makes a great Chardonnay? Well it’s really down to personal opinion as what’s great for the person next to you, is not necessarily great for you. For me a great Chardonnay is complex. It’s bold and full bodied yet elegant. It has the right amount of oaky oomph that’s…
Moss Wood 2021 Chardonnay – Stuart Knox, The Real Review
A striking straw gold in the glass that shows aroma of buttery toast and ripe nectarines. A big wine, full of fruit weight and power with rich oak spice overtones throughout. Acidity keeps it all in check and it flows long to a spiced finish. A wine of richness and…
Moss Wood 2021 Chardonnay – Ken Gargett, Wine Pilot
If one may begin with the bottom line up top, I think that this is the very best Moss Wood Chardonnay I have seen for a very long time. This sits with the finest the region can offer. Indeed, I’d go further. Moss Wood has an enviable record for its…
More Than Cabernet From Moss Wood – Reviews of Moss Wood 2021 Chardonnay, Moss Wood 2020 Pinot Noir, Moss Wood 2022 Semillon – Ray Jordan wine review, Business News
More than cabernet from Moss Wood Moss Wood’s versatility is on full display with three wines from its 2020 crop. “The 2020 vintage was one of the smallest on record but the fruit that did come off the old vines was generous and beautifully flavoured. Moss Wood cabernet sauvignon is…
Moss Wood 2021 Chardonnay – James Suckling, jamesuckling.com
Peaches, white grapefruits, baked apples, vanilla pods and lemon pie. Buttery and full-bodied yet fresh. Delicious cream notes at the end. Drink now. Screw cap. October, 2022
Moss Wood 2021 Chardonnay – Marc Malouf, Wine Worth Writing About
Medium gold with a beautifully fine and expressive nose of lemon/orange blossom, jasmine tea, honeysuckle, fingerlime, white pineapple, nashi pear, fresh stonefruit, spearmint, nougat, cashew praline and caramelised vanilla goodness. There’s a cool freshness to it.In the mouth it rolls over the palate with elegance, silkiness and a deliciously juicy…
Moss Wood 2021 Chardonnay – Ray Jordan, Business News
Everything about this wine points to it being one of the best chardonnays yet from Moss Wood. Opens with a creamy, nutty and slightly savoury aroma. It’s a nose that continues to reveal more each time you get into it. The palate is the real feature, however. It has the…
Moss Wood 2021 Chardonnay – Gary Walsh, The Wine Front
You’re rarely left wondering what you’re drinking when you have a Moss Wood Chardonnay. Peach and lime, honeysuckle, ginger snap oak, and Jersey Caramel. Plenty of flavour, all peach tea and lime, with a spicy cashew creaminess, ripe and fruity, kind of glossy, but tight in citrus acidity. Offers some…
Vintage Notes
In some ways, it’s really quite easy to describe the 2020/21 growing season – long and cool. With an average temperature of 18.6°C, the Chardonnay vines ripened at a very leisurely pace indeed, taking 137 days to progress from flowering to harvest, basically 3 weeks longer than usual. When the fruit came off on the 24th March, it had the very pleasing ripeness of 13.4° Baume, slightly above average, despite
the mild conditions. All up, a very satisfying result. It must have been a pretty straightforward season, surely? Well, actually, no, not quite.
The fun started way back in October, 2019, when on the 24th, hail cut a swathe across the Moss Wood vineyard. That was almost 17 months prior to the 2021 vintage, so how can that have affected it? The answer can be seen in the yield, which at 4.89 tonnes per hectare, is down by 27%. More specifically, the bunch numbers were down by around 40%, because the hail damaged both the wood and the buds
that we had available for pruning in 2020 and which gave us the 2021 crop. It’s another reminder that a good hailstorm harms the crops for at least 2 years – the current season and the one following.
The vines can make up a yield deficit if they enjoy good flowering conditions. However, spring 2020 was fairly damp, with 13 of 40 days delivering 97mm of rain, not to mention 8 days when the temperature dropped below 8°C. As a result, those fewer bunches also weighed 20% less than usual.
Mother Nature settled down a bit through December and January, giving mild but benign conditions and we waited patiently for the vines to progress. At the end of the first week of February she changed her mind and gave us her “don’t get too comfortable” warning, delivering 88mm of rain and then a further 40mm at the beginning of March. No wonder farmers complain!
Despite all of the above, our spray program worked well, so we had no disease. In the end, we just needed to be patient and let the fruit reach full ripeness, which it did with ease.
Production Notes
As always at Moss Wood, the fruit was harvested by hand although
when we sent our Afghani pickers into the vineyard they weren’t too happy with the quantity on offer and there was much grumbling in the Hazari patois. Reassurance about the excellent quality didn’t seem to offer much solace.
The fruit was then delivered to the winery, sorted by hand and whole-bunch pressed. The must was settled and then seeded with multiple yeast strains for primary fermentation. On 3rd April 2021, at the halfway stage, the fermenting juice was racked to oak. All the barrels were 225 litre French oak and 50% were new.
Malolactic fermentation then took place and once completed, all the barrels were racked and blended in stainless steel, adjusted with SO2 and then the finished wine was returned to oak.
There it stayed until 18th July 2022 when all the barrels were again racked and blended in stainless steel. Fining trials were carried out but none improved the wine’s balance and so it was fined only with bentonite for protein stability. It was then cold stabilized and sterile filtered into bottle on 3rd August 2022.
TASTING NOTES
Colour and condition:
Medium straw hue with green tints. Bright condition.
Nose:
An absolutely typical Moss Wood Chardonnay showing all the vineyard’s classical features but with the added intensity from the mild season. There are bright fruit aromas of melon, peach and lime, with a complex background of roast cashews and almonds, crème caramel and honey. The final note is a soft, lightly toasty oak.
Palate:
The influence of the cool season also shows up nicely on the palate, where the wine displays full body but crisp acidity. This amplifies the bright peach and melon flavours, followed by caramel and a touch of oak. There is some tannin on the finish but they are nicely balanced by the fruit generosity.
Cellaring
Given the very high quality of the year, we strongly recommend the 2021 for cellaring and suggest a minimum of 10 years for some bottle development but it can be aged well beyond 20 years to reach full maturity. However, there is one proviso, it is very enjoyable now and will tempt even the most dedicated cellaring person.