“Stunning.”
Puligny Quality At A Fraction Of The Price

Dear Artisans,

Wine Spectator does not throw the word stunning around. They used it on a Chardonnay that costs forty-eight dollars, from a valley most Americans could not find on a map, and they were right.

Phil Sexton arrived in the Yarra Valley in 1997 hunting sites for Chardonnay and Pinot Noir with real purity, and founded Giant Steps the following year. He named it after the John Coltrane album, which tells you most of what you need to know about the ambition. Steve Flamsteed has been chief winemaker since 2003, and between them they have taken the estate to 34 trophies, more than 100 gold medals, and six consecutive years on Wine & Spirits’ Top 100 Wineries in the World.

That is not marketing. It is a genuinely cool-climate region where Chardonnay and Pinot Noir keep their acid and their nerve, and where the best producers work single vineyards the way the Cote d’Or does. Giant Steps bottles Sexton, Applejack, Primavera, Tarraford, Wombat Creek and Swallowfield separately for exactly that reason.

A wet spring, then a long cool summer with temperatures under the average and rain that arrived when it was wanted. Ripening stretched out by weeks. The result is concentration and natural acidity in the same wine, which is the combination everyone chases and few vintages deliver. These drink beautifully now and hold for years.

The wine Wine Spectator called stunning, and the one to buy by the half case. Fruit from across the valley with half from the cooler Upper Yarra ranges. Chilled overnight, whole-bunch pressed at dawn, straight into 500-litre French puncheons at only 15% new. Wild ferment over ten days, barely any malolactic, and it sits on lees until October. 12.5% alcohol, and it tastes like it.

Phil Sexton’s home vineyard, on the steep north-facing slopes of the Warramate Ranges at 200 metres. Thin topsoil, shallow gravelly loam over hard rocky clay, and yields that set naturally low. 60% Gingin clone, the cutting Sexton brought over from Western Australia himself. Halliday called it his pick of the four single-vineyard 2021 Chardonnays.

Lou Primavera planted this vineyard at Hoddles Creek in 2001 and Giant Steps has taken fruit from it since 2006. Pinot on two slopes of the gully at the head of Lone Star Creek, MV6 on the north face, 115 and G-clone on the south. It reliably gives the most floral and red-fruited Pinot in the range. Made with 50 to 60% whole bunch. Only 922 cases made and 200 imported to the entire United States.

If you drink white Burgundy and have watched the prices go where they have gone, the Yarra Valley Chardonnay is the most direct answer I can give you. Ninety-four points and the word stunning from Wine Spectator, for less than a village Puligny.

The two single vineyards are a different proposition. There are four bottles of the Sexton and five of the Primavera on the floor, 200 cases of that Pinot came into the whole country, and when they are gone I have no idea when the next allocation lands.

Cheers,