Moss Wood 2022 Chardonnay
| Wine Facts | |
|---|---|
| Median Harvest Date | 10th March, 2022 |
| Mean Harvest Ripeness | 13.2°Be |
| Yield | 5.96 t/ha |
| Growing Season Ave Temperature | 20.3⁰C |
| Number of hours accrued between 18 and 28⁰C | 1013 hours |
| Number of hours above 33⁰C | 113 hours |
| Days Elapsed between Flowering and Harvest | 121 days |
| Bottled | 4th July, 2023 |
| Released | 1st September, 2023 |
| Alcohol | 14.00 % |
Wine Facts
-
Median Harvest Date
10th March, 2022
-
Harvest Ripeness
13.2°Be
-
Yield
5.96 t/ha
-
Weather Data
Growing season Ave Temperature - 20.3⁰C
Number of hours accrued between 18° and 28⁰C – 1013 hours
Number of hours above 33⁰C – 113 hours
-
Days Elapsed between Flowering and Harvest
121 days
-
Bottled
4th July, 2023
-
Released
1st September, 2023
-
Alcohol
14.00%
Moss Wood 2022 Chardonnay – Cassandra Charlick, Decanter
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…
Moss Wood 2022 Chardonnay – Jane Faulkner – James Halliday, The Wine Companion
It falls into the big, rich and ripe camp. Bold flavours of dried pears and apricots with some apple compote dusted in warm spices and butter. Lashings of oak, cedary sweet and spicy, which is bolstering the palate even more. It’s a solid wine, and no doubt it has a…
Moss Wood 2022 Chardonnay – Erin Larkin, The Wine Advocate
The 2022 Chardonnay leads with a nose redolent of white chocolate praline, roasted/salted/crushed cashews, orange oil, vanilla pod and wafer. In the mouth, the phenolics serve to almost balance the opulent fruit; this is a huge, pillowy wine of substance and volume. It tastes the way custard cooking on the…
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 2022 Chardonnay – Ray Jordan, Ray Jordan Wine
Another cracking good chardonnay from Moss Wood. The aroma is immediately engaging with a floral lemon scent and a slight vanilla bean essence. Subtle cut lime and pear edge into add some further complexity. The palate is a powerful statement with a deeply intense creamy stone fruit and edgy lemon…
Moss Wood 2022 Chardonnay – Fergal Gleeson, Great Wine Blog
The Moss Wood house style is rich and at the complex end of the Margaret River spectrum. Sourced from the historic Wilyabrup estate vineyard, there is no attempt to force a lean or mineral Chardonnay from the site. It’s full bodied but shapely. Lime and nectarine fruit flavours, marmalade and…
Moss Wood 2022 Chardonnay – Angus Hughson, Wine Pilot.com
This intensely aromatic and bold 2022 Margaret River Chardonnay delivers powerful almond, nectarine peach skin fruit with a rich spicy French oak backbone. An impressive package follows with zesty acidity, rich compact fruit and taut oak providing immediate impact before more floral and citrus tones begin to emerge. Young and tight,…
Moss Wood 2022 Chardonnay – Ned Goodwin, jamessuckling.com
This is a large-framed chardonnay, trying its best to burst from a mid-weighted 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 bumptious expression. Yet the tension remains. The belt of cedar…
Moss Wood 2022 Chardonnay – Andrew Caillard, Wine Pilot.com – The Vintage Journal
Medium pale colour. Beautiful grapefruit, melon aromas with marzipan vanilla notes. Generous and creamy with ripe yellow fruits, melon, white apricot flavours, fine supple textures, superb marzipan vanilla oak notes and fresh long indelible acidity. Lovely viscosity and mineral length; the oak in perfect symmetry to the fruit. A lovely…
Moss Wood 2022 Chardonnay – Ken Gargett, Wine Pilot.com
A vintage of contrasts but certainly yet another of the seemingly endless procession of superb years in Margaret River. The juice was clarified in stainless steel, seeded with an array of yeasts for a controlled ferment. Racking to oak, 228-litre French oak, 54% of which was new. Full malo, blending…
Vintage Notes
As we look back on the 2021/22 growing season, we’re reminded it was one of contrasts. In calendar year 2021, we recorded our highest rainfall since Keith started working at Moss Wood, all the way in 1979. The amount was 1440mm, some 40% above average. Boy, did we have some wet days!
Temperatures were accordingly mild and the vine growth during spring was relatively slow. Chardonnay didn’t start flowering until late October and lasted for 5 weeks. However, the weather was beginning to change because during that time we experienced 11 days of rain and received the relatively low amount of 43mm. The accompanying temperatures were a little on the cold side, when there were 12 days where the thermometer recorded less than 8°C, for a total of 60 hours. Luckily, there was only one night where it got seriously cold and we recorded 3.8°C but the other 11 nights were all around 7°, so not too bad.
Once Mother Nature flicked the switch to “Dry”, that’s where it stayed for most of the season. We only received 15mm through the summer and most of which fell in the first week of February.
The vineyard looked in good shape as the season progressed and so we were a bit disappointed when we started picking, with yields lower than we hoped. Bunch numbers varied a bit but were 3% above average across the board. However, bunch weights were down by 14%, so the final crop came in at 5.96 tonnes per hectare, down 11%.
This seems to have been driven by two main things. It got a bit cold during flowering and that would have caused some poor fruit set. We also had some hot weather around Christmas, some of the hottest experienced by Keith since he’s been here. On Boxing Day 2021, the mercury peaked at 41.2°C, the hottest day since 25th February 1985, when we reached 41.5°C and our overnight minimum on the 27th was a balmy 24°C. All this to say, the timing wasn’t good for the vines and we suspect contributed to smaller berries. After that two day burst, things returned to normal until the 19th January 2022, when we recorded a maximum of 40°C, during a 3 day warm spell and after which we cruised into a relatively mild February and the beginning of autumn.
These sorts of conditions were reminiscent of both 2003 and 1983, although Keith’s view is the 2022 is more like the latter. Having said that, the impact of the early arrival of autumn can be seen in the harvest dates. Despite the two heat spikes, the growing season was relatively long, with Chardonnay taking 121 days to go from flowering to harvest, 6 days longer than usual, with an average temperature of 20.3°C, so a warm year. For context, 2012, our warmest year since our weather station data began in 1999, was 20.5°C and 114 days from flowering to harvest, while in 2021, a cool year, it was 18.6° and 137 days.
Returning to the point, the final 6 weeks of ripening took place in very pleasant conditions and the fruit flavours evolved at a leisurely pace and full ripeness was evident by 9th March.
Production Notes
All the fruit was hand picked and then delivered to the winery where bunches were sorted and transferred to the presses. The pressed juice was clarified in stainless steel then seeded with multiple yeast strains for primary fermentation. Once underway, temperatures were controlled to 18°C. At the halfway stage, once the aggressive yeast growth is completed and the heat production moderates, the juice was racked to wood. All the barrels were 228 litre French oak and 54% were new. After a full malolactic fermentation, all the barrels were blended, the finished wine was adjusted and returned to oak, where it stayed for 16 months, until June 2023. It was then racked to stainless steel, where fining trials were carried out but none improved the wine, so it is unfined. It was then sterile filtered and bottled on 4th July, 2023.
TASTING NOTES
Colour and condition:
Medium straw hue with green tints. Bright condition.
Nose:
Classic Moss Wood Chardonnay showing bright aromas of peach, white nectarine, rock melon, limes, malt biscuit and roast cashew. The background has multiple components with a touch of minerality as well as caramel, butter, cloves and soft, spicy oak.
Palate:
The initial impression is one of freshness, with bright grapefruit, melon, peach and butterscotch flavours, some might say custard tart, sitting over fresh acid and full body, an unctuous combination. The tannin structure is firm but clean, with no bitterness and then there is a spicy, toasty oak note on the finish.
Cellaring
There is much to discuss here but in summary, the 2022 Moss Wood Chardonnay will evolve in the following way. Its youthful brightness means over the first 5 years it will be enjoyable for those who prefer lots of generous young fruit flavours. As it ages through 10 years, this will diminish a little and the bottle bouquet of butter and toast will begin to play a bigger role. Once it reaches 20 years of age, these will be the dominant characters and the wine will be fully mature. However, it should maintain good balance and be enjoyable drinking for at least another decade.