About The WIne
Notes by Winemaker; Dane Johns:
In 2024 we were lucky enough to get access to some exceptional Chardonnay fruit from the legendary Nicholson River vineyard. This vineyard was instrumental in putting Gippsland Chardonnay on the map in the 80’s, 90’s and 2000’s (just ask Max Allen) and now has an average vine age of 47 years.
Not that I am one for wine judging results but, notably, this vineyard has produced what was voted Victoria’s best white wine no less than 9 times over the last few decades.
Needless to say I jumped at the chance to make wine from this fruit!
The vineyard sits on the banks of the Nicholson river. The vines are dry grown and farmed using sustainable, organic practices (not certified). The soils as you would expect are alluvial gravels and clays (from silt).
It is cropped extremely low at approximately 0.8t to the acre and is entirely comprised of the p58 clone. This clone was one of the first Chardonnay clones brought into Australia, in 1958 in fact (from France). It is itself naturally low cropping and generally produces a very fine, complex wine leaning toward the lemon and lime spectrum.
We picked the fruit around 11.8b and it was right on the money. The fruit was lightly macerated and then put into the cool room overnight to chill. It was pulled out in the morning and pressed directly to stainless steel tank for the duration of fermentation.
Once ferment had finished the wine was racked to one single 650L ceramic egg for 9 months elevage. The wine was then bottled by hand directly from the egg in late November at which time 10ppm of so2 was added to reduce oxygen exposure.
I could not be happier with this wine. There are some wines that just look incredible from day one, this was certainly one of those wines!
It’s a stunningly pure, delicate and complex expression of Chardonnay from an exceptional vineyard.
Bottled by gravity, Sealed with premium natural cork and beeswax.
About Nikau Farms
Dane Johns has carved a formidable reputation making some of Australia's best natural wines. His hugely popular Momento Mori wines have a cult following and it's not hard to see why. The Nikau Farms wines are from Dane and Hannah's Gippsland vineyards.
They operate with the ideology of creating wines that first and foremost respect the living and are wines that they like to drink and share. They farm two sites one on the steep hills of Strezelecki Ranges in Gippsland and another beneath the Black Snake Ranges in the Tonimbuk valley.
Farmed strictly with organic principles and a appreciation of the living and dynamic environment around them. Nikau Farm wines are all very small batch with no use of new oak or mechanical pumps used on the wines, no fining or filtering and no additions apart from occasionally a tiny amount of S02 at bottling.
Snapshot
Region: Gippsland, VIC
Country: Australia
Alcohol: 12%
Vintage: 2024
Size: 750ml
Closure: Wax sealed cork
Grape: Chardonnay
