Vasse Felix 'Heytesbury' Chardonnay 2024

Vasse Felix 'Heytesbury' Chardonnay 2024 is an extraordinary, highly concentrated, and multi-layered Australian white wine that represents a pinnacle of modern cool-climate winemaking. Originating from the warmest and earliest growing season on record in Margaret River, this vintage displays an incredibly deep, voluptuous profile that beautifully showcases the estate’s prized Gingin clone. In the glass, it pours a brilliant straw-yellow hue with green-gold undertones. The nose is remarkably complex and expressive, opening with a refined bouquet of yellow peach, lemon curd, and floral honeysuckle, interspersed with savory undertones of toasted cashew, flinty smoke, and a fresh sea spray salinity. On the palate, this medium-to-full-bodied Chardonnay is intensely focused and powerful, driving flavors of grapefruit pith, ripe stone fruits, and warm baking spices across a framework of fine, chalky phenolics. It seamlessly balances its rich, creamy texture with a precise, laser-like line of saline acidity that carries into a remarkably long, savory, and structural finish.

Food Pairing: Pairs beautifully with garlic-butter basted lobster tail, pan-seared sea scallops, wild mushroom risotto, or roasted herb-infused chicken.

97 Points - James Suckling

The balance of fruit and tension is fantastic, with aromas of lemon confit, oatmeal, white mushrooms, crushed stones, jasmine, green melon and citrus blossoms. The palate is mid-weighted with a tightly woven texture, fine-boned acidity and a lovely phenolic grip intertwining oak and fruit. It’s generous, yet retains all the tension and salinity typical of Margaret River. Don’t be misled by the fruit concentration. There’s still freshness and minerality throughout. Excellent. Drink or hold. Screw cap.

97 Points - Robert Parker's Wine Advocate

The 2024 Heytesbury Chardonnay leads with toasted cashews and white peach, pink grapefruit and preserved lemon rind, all of it woven together by saline acidity. There's pressed linen, white flowers and wax, too. The palate is textural and shapely (something of a house style at Vasse Felix), and the length through the finish is long. While this may not have the precision and focus of the 2023 Heytesbury, it has personality, texture, line and power, and I love it for all of those attributes. What a superstar wine. It was fermented 100% in French oak, with 85% of the volume in barrique and the balance in puncheon. The total percentage of new oak was 53%, and the wine was matured for 10 months, followed by six months post-blending in tank. It will be released globally on May 1, 2026. 13.5% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.