Good things come in small packages, and great wines are often made in meagre quantities – just like the 2022 About Time release.
Made by Henry Borchardt & James McLeay, there are just 310 cases across two wines. That’s bugger all. SFA, especially after the boys send a box or three to freeloading scribes like me. More importantly, they’re fine, detailed, complex and delicious wines in a style I want to make. If anything, they’re just a bit too young, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing either.
Oh and both are currently available at the About Time Wines website.
About Time Echunga Chardonnay 2022
Sourced from a block at Echunga, 400m up. Wild ferment, unfined and unfiltered. Lovely. My pick of the two wines, although it’s more a personal preference (and curiously, this is cheaper, although with half the new oak so there is that). Golden yellow straw in colour and a rather classical Adelaide Hills style. Straw, buttercup, white peach, vanilla bean, but all about that fine balance between enough stonefruit flavour and a lean and linear palate. Oak tannins threaten that delicacy a little but never derail what a very lean and linear, beautifully refined Chardonnay. Tight but not ungenerous, this has a lovely freshness, a proper bag of tricks, winemaking complexity, and underrated energy without hardness or looking unripe. Time will be kind, but masterful modern wine it is already.
Best drinking: probably next year, then over a decade if you really want. 18.5/20, 94/100+. 13.2%, $38. Would I buy it? Yes, please.
About Time Woodside Chardonnay 2022
From a block at 368m above sea level, which is all Clone 95 (the backbone of the Tiers Vineyard speaking of Chardonnay clones). Wild fermented, matured in 50% new oak. 130 cases made. This is lighter than the Echunga but also has more open white peach flavour – it feels more familiar, and the extra oak and a bit more obvious funk make this very seductive. Less obviously intense, but more milk bottle and vanilla bean, with these extra peach highlights that will probably win over more people (even if I’m in the Echunga camp). Super stylish and really enjoyable Hills Chard.
Best drinking: also from next year, but you don’t really need to wait – delicious now. 18.5/20, 94/100. 13%, $45. Would I buy it? Also yes.
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