Chalmers Falanghina

A delicately intense wine built around a framework of zippy acid and fleshed out with exotic flavours of orchid and lemon verbena with a gentle grip to finish. Chalmers Falanghina is an exciting wine for us as it brings together our years of viticulture and winemaking experience to produce a finely honed white wine of poise and finesse, the kind that usually hails from cooler places, yet we are able to grow this in a hot dry region. It’s a wine of the future, and it’s delicious. Put it on the table anywhere you’d usually pop a Riesling or a Gruner Veltliner. Aromatic, racy and morish it can be enjoyed with or without food.

Another Campanian variety that we’ve imported from Italy, this wine is grown on the highest elevation ‘top block‘ at our Heathcote vineyard. A very rocky site with a complex mix of basalt, dolerite, jasper and limestone which was formed over 350 million years ago. You wouldn’t usually plant a white grape on such an exposed and challenging site but when we were planning this block and reading up, the textbooks said Falanghina loves this kind of location.

Hand picked and whole bunch pressed, this is a wine that sees no oak influence to showcase the purity of varietal expression. Wild ferment with native yeasts, no acid adds and aged on fine lees for 5 months, a wine that shows incredible balance between the zippy almost piercing acid line, intense fruit profile and mineral drive.