Byrne Farm Chardonnay 2025

Grapes are sourced from 25-year-old vines on the north and eastern facing slope on Mount Canobolas. The vineyard sits at just over 800m (for every 100m above sea level the temperature drops 1 degree). The fruit for this wine was handpicked in early March. Fruit was top-loaded into our open-slotted Europress press, lightly pressed with cloudy/turbid juice lightly fined and put to 500L French oak puncheons with 25% new oak, for fermentation with stirring for texture once a month and no MLF this year to preserve the fruit purity of red apple and white stone fruits. The wine was matured in oak for 10 months before blending in November and prepped for bottling in late January. The 2025 Vintage will go down as one of Orange's great Vintages. Above-average winter rainfall set the season up for a terrific start, and a mild to warm spring established ideal flowering and early growth in the vineyard. The weather in Summer had a dozen or so days over 30 degrees, meaning fruit maturity was able to achieve phenological ripeness. The 2025 wines are showing lots of flavour with the hallmark mineral acidity of Orange.