Brown Brothers, 'Estate Range', Victoria, Chardonnay 2021

Brown Brothers is one of Australia's leading family-owned wine companies. Based in Milawa, Victoria for over 130 years, it is the Brown family’s sense of adventure and innovation has led them to where they are now: creating exciting new wines, pushing boundaries, and developing vineyards in some of the best regions in Australia. In 1989, Brown Brothers celebrated 100 years of winemaking and established the ‘Kindergarten Winery’ a mini-sized winery where experimental and innovative wines can be made on a smaller scale. In 2015, fourth generation Katherine Brown joined the winemaking team and became the first female winemaker in the family, working alongside award winning winemaker Cate Looney. For a company named Brown Brothers, today they are led by a team of eight women and two men. Their pioneering range of wines includes less known varieties such as Cienna and Tarrango and an alcohol-free duo named ‘Zero’. They are members of Sustainable Winegrowing Australia, and all their wines are precisely crafted, with care, attention and consistency.

The 2021 vintage was defined by a cool, wet growing season, with a particularly damp spring hindering flowering and leading to lower yields. However, a warm, dry finish to summer allowed grapes to ripen slowly and develop complex flavours. The resulting wines are characterised by bright acidity, elegant structure, and pronounced aromatics.

The Chardonnay grapes were grown in the Banksdale vineyard, located in the King Valley of Northeast Victoria. Nestled among the foothills of the Australian Alps and it is becoming renowned for its cool-climate and diverse terroir. The Banksdale Vineyard is planted at 485 metres elevation, where it experiences warm, sunny days and cooler evenings, influenced by the katabatic breeze that sweeps northward down the valley from the high country. This diurnal temperature difference encourages a long hang time, during which the grapes reach good phenolic maturity and varietal complexity, while retaining balancing acidity. The soils are varied, but the predominant soil type in the Kings Valley is a deep, red clay which offers a good balance between good water retention properties to sustain the vines through the warm days, but also enough drainage so the right amount of stress encourages the concentration of flavours.

The grapes were harvested at a Baumé level ranging from 12 to 12.5. 60% of this wine was fermented in French oak to impart gentle toasty character, while the remaining 40% was fermented in stainless steel to retain the purity of fruit and freshness. The wine was aged for nine months in French oak, of which 14% was new.