2017 Leeuwin Estate Art Series Chardonnay Australia

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  • 99pt "Rolls Royce" Australian Chard
  • Crocodile Dundee's Favorite Wine
  • Multiple 96+ Since 2009
  • Singular Artist Label
  • BHW Has the Lowest Price Anywhere!
  • Free shipping on 6 or more bottles

About The Wine

Leeuwin Estate is a family-owned producer and one of the five founding wineries of the Margaret River district of Western Australia. The winery is currently under the direction of two generations who work with a team of highly skilled winemakers to consistently produce wines ranking alongside the world’s finest. In 1972, legendary Napa Valley winemaker Robert Mondavi identified the future site of the Leeuwin vineyard as being ideal for the production of premium wine and provided early mentorship to Denis and Tricia Horgan in the transformation of their cattle farm into Leeuwin Estate. Following its first commercial vintage in 1979, Leeuwin was thrust into the international spotlight when Decanter Magazine gave its highest recommendation to the 1981 “Art Series” Chardonnay. The international accolades have continued and Leeuwin now exports to 30 markets. Celebrating the combination of fine wine, food, art, and music, Leeuwin features an award-winning restaurant, cellar door, and art gallery. The Estate is renowned for staging spectacular events and welcoming visitors from around the world.

Leeuwin Estate releases wines under the Art Series, Prelude Vineyards, and Siblings labels. The “Art Series” represents Leeuwin’s most opulent and age-worthy wines and is distinguished with paintings commissioned from leading contemporary Australian Artists. Prelude Vineyards wines are made from fruit that produces the most readily expressive wines with the objective that they will drink well soon after release. The Siblings label celebrates the family lineage and the three generations now leaving their footprints on Leeuwin Estate. They all share a place amongst the great wines of Australia, receiving much international acclaim and attention. Leeuwin’s Art Series Chardonnay and Art Series Cabernet Sauvignon are included in the wine auction house, Langton’s, prestigious classification. 

Tasting notes

100% Chardonnay. Immaculate, powerful, intense nose with purity and clarity of primary fruit characterized by pear, white peach, lime curd, and custard apple. There are infinite layers of brioche, grilled hazelnuts, cinnamon quill, shaved nutmeg, black cardamom, and almond meal. A thread of graphite in the background adds elegant complexity. Penetration and drive with incredible shape and frame on the palate. The symmetry of layers, contours, and overall balance is precise. Pear, cut lime and nectarine are definite throughout. Sweet spice and elegant oak use sit neatly with the fruit, underlined by a delicate acid line, leading to a palate with effortless length.

Reviews

This achieves another step up the quality ladder for Leeuwin Estate, seemingly impossible. There's been no change in the vinification, nor in the vineyard. The change is an increase in the intensity of the flavors, and hence their length and aftertaste. It's an extraordinary wine, among the greatest of Burgundy (and elsewhere in the world). Whatever you expect from its future development will be delivered. ~99 James Halliday

Light yellow, a very youthful color. The bouquet has substantial oak as well as some tropical fruit, cashew nut, and fluffy yeast aromas. The palate is very intense and vibrant, with nervy acidity and richness to match, the aftertaste lingering on and on. A power-packed wine that is compact and rightly packaged, latent like an unexploded bomb! Intense and sustained grapefruit and lemon aftertaste. An impressive, high-impact chardonnay of great potential. The sheer power of the fruit is awesome. ~98 The Real Review

Sometimes you just have to lean back and marvel. The art of Margaret River chardonnay. This is it. You don’t just drink a wine like this, you set it in your mind as a benchmark. It’s a wine built on power, texture, and length, center-half forward, center-half back, and ruck, with acidity roving through and the fragrance cheering loud. That seduction upfront, that pure fresh peach, that huge energetic push through the back half. Blumey Charlie the crushed fennel characters here are full-on. It’s on the frisky side of luxury. It’s damn good. ~97 The Winefront

Such complexity and resolve make for a very attractive nose with peaches, grapefruit, cedary oak spice, gunflint, and wet stones. The palate has a plush, smoothly resolved texture with a rich, creamy texture and all-encompassing, ripe stone-fruit flavors, ahead of a very long, smooth finish. Grilled hazelnut and apricot-kernel flavors to close. Great to drink now, but certainly a decade of cellaring in the tank, too. ~96 James Suckling

This felt fancy and impressive from the very first moment it hit the glass. Bright, limey, tight and finely wrought, power and structure in spades with incredible velocity and tension in the palate. It is a wine of pedigree and distinction. Delicious too; a rolling feast of fresh fruit, savoury notes, florals, oak and quiet minerality. Yes, thank you. Rolls Royce chardonnay. ~#3 of Top 25 Wines of 2020, WA Good Food Guide

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