Pierro Chardonnay Margaret River 2020

Pierro's Chardonnay exists almost by accident. Dr Mike Peterkin — a  doctor, viticulturist and winemaker who trained at Roseworthy and cut his teeth at Cullen, where he created Australia's first Semillon-Sauvignon Blanc blend — had actually intended to specialise in Riesling when he planted his Willyabrup vineyard in 1980. But when his vine supplier was left with roughly 5,000 spare Chardonnay cuttings from a failed order, Mike agreed to take them off his friend's hands as a favour. It turned out to be one of the most consequential decisions in Margaret River wine history: those Gin Gin clone vines, planted at an unusually high density of 4,000 to 5,500 vines per hectare (against a conventional Australian planting of around 1,900), became the foundation of what's now widely regarded as one of the country's most iconic Chardonnays. The style was refined from its first release in 1986 onward, and Mike — who still works as a GP every Friday, unable to give up his original calling — has never chased fashion, sticking resolutely to his rich, full-malolactic, heavily-lees-stirred approach even as the rest of Australia chased leaner, more reductive styles.

The result is exactly what one critic called "monumental power" delivered with "smooth and silky" finesse: white peach and grapefruit meet a muted butterscotch richness, opening onto a powerful, nutty, glossy palate that drives with real urgency through to a remarkably long finish. Beneath all that generosity sits a taut line of acidity and genuine fruit purity, which is why Langton's classifies it "Outstanding" and why it ages so gracefully. Recent vintages have scored as high as 98 points, described as sitting "alongside anything Peterkin has made in more than four decades."