Moss Wood 2006 Chardonnay
Wine Facts
| Harvested: | 17/3/2006 |
| Bottled: | 14/2/2007 |
| Released: | 24/5/2007 |
| Yield: | 3.46 t/ha |
| Baume: | 12.80 |
| Alcohol: | 14.50% |
| Vintage Rating: | 10/10 |
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Moss Wood 2023 Chardonnay – Fergal Gleeson, Great Wine Blog
The nose tells you that you are in for something complex and delicious. A lightning rod of refreshing acid runs through this wine robed in lime, grapefruit and textured tannins. The Moss Wood house style is traditionally a rich and full bodied Wilyabrup Chardonnay. Perhaps it’s the cooler vintage…
Moss Wood 2023 Chardonnay – Ray Jordan, Ray Jordan Wine
One of the best chardies yet from Moss Wood, and that’s saying something with the quality of wines over the years. The nose is an immediately captivating combo of lemon curd, quince and cashew with just a subtle lift of zest. The palate has a sprightly energy with a crisp…
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 2021 Chardonnay – Jane Faulkner – James Halliday, The Wine Companion
Fans of bold, rich and ripe chardonnay will relish this wine. Off a cooler vintage, so thankfully there’s plenty of acidity here to offset those full flavours of ripe white peach, mango, and preserved lemon rind with loads of oak adding baking spices and woodsy characters. A hint of butterscotch,…
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…
Moss Wood Ribbon Vale 2023 Chardonnay – Ray Jordan, Ray Jordan Wine
A recent addition to the Moss Wood portfolio showing the great strides that have been taken in managing the Ribbon Vale vineyard. This is probably the best release yet. It was a superb season and its shows in a wine of elegance and refinement, yet with layered complexity and sophistication….
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…
Tasting Notes
The Moss Wood 2006 Chardonnay is a beauty.
It has intense cedary aromas, intense melon and grapefruit flavour, richness, concentration and power, superb, viscous texture, and fine, crisp, dry acidity on a finish of considerable length.
The wine is bright, vibrant and primal with plump, generous flavours. The oak is overt at present but will settle down in the short term.
Vintage Notes
The 2006 vintage would have tried the patience of even the most saintly. The mild-mannered proprietors were close to using expletives to describe the weather, especially toward the end of January.
At this stage, it was so very cold - the average maximum was four degrees below normal and so the ripening process was ridiculously slow. The air temperature was low, so the vines looked yellow and couldn’t grow properly - vigour was anything but vigorous. Cool of itself, is not a great concern, indeed, the cool seasons can produce some of the finest wines. However, as someone once noted, there is a fine line between pleasure and pain. If the season is too cool the wine will be thin and green but one or two days of extra heat is enough to accrue the right flavours and balance. Then there is the additional worry that the longer ripening goes into autumn, the greater the threat of rain and 2006 was looking to be so very late that we were not just paranoid about the cabernet, we were even nervous about the chardonnay.
And so it was that in the end we finished with pleasure, not pain. Things warmed up in February and thanks to absurdly low yields, the fruit got to 13 Baume and full flavour ripeness. In a moment of calmness, it was probably a blessing in disguise that the flowering was so poor and bunch weights (and therefore yields) so low, otherwise the grapes may never have ripened. Perhaps we had the best of both worlds for Chardonnay, with low yields for concentration of flavours and a long, gentle season to accumulate the full range of flavours.
This was evident right from the start because although it was a difficult year and a relief to get the grapes in, the fermenting wine gave immediate indication of the vintage quality, showing a clear stamp of freshness on the fruit character - bright lime citrus notes, fine, zingy, fresh, crisp acidity which continued throughout the barrel fermentation and aging process.
Production Notes
As usual, it was whole bunch pressed, cold settled and racked into barrel for fermentation. This year, there was less battonage than usual - once per week rather than daily to better retain the fruit freshness of the wine. About a third went through malolactic fermentation. After ten months in barrel, it was fined with bentonite for protein stability, cold stabilised, sterile filtered and bottled. A grand total of just under 500 cases were made.
Pre-blending, there were extensive tastings to check on the choice of barrels and to compare the effects of different levels of fruit exposure in the vineyard. The results have been fascinating. The oak trials confirmed our preference for the Tonnellerie Remond barriques, with an interesting dimension added by Tonnellerie Rouseau. Other barrel trials will continue, even though we believe this combination suits the wine admirably. The vineyard trials consisted firstly, of the grapes fully exposed with no leaves around the bunches, and secondly, with no leaf removal. The wine with all leaves removed is a more complex style of chardonnay with accentuated malty and roasted nut characters while the wine with none removed tended to retain citrus, honeysuckle and peach blossom aromatics and looked prettier than the other.
While both components looked good, we preferred a blend of the two over each of the individual components. This combination was continued with the 2007 vintage and the early indications are the result will be the same.
Cellaring Notes
The structure, tightness, concentration and depth of the Moss Wood 2006 Chardonnay suggest that the wine will improve over the next two or three years and, with careful cellaring, can be enjoyed over the next decade.