2006 Bay of Fires Chardonnay $N/A

12/26/2024

Yes, you read correctly. The vintage is 2006, the wine having been woken from its slumbers in the cool, dark Smith cellar to share with family at Christmas. OK, OK... to share with Mrs Smith. It was an eye-opening experience.

After the Hardy Wine Company had spent a handful of years sourcing topnotch fruit from Tasmania, the South Australian-based family company despatched one of its best and brightest winemakers to Pipers River in 2001 to set up a new winery, about to be called Bay of Fires. Fran Austin quietly slipped in under the radar and soon began doing great things, including working alongside Arras sparkling wine creator, Ed Carr. In 2005, Austin was named Young Winemaker of the Year by Gourmet Traveller Wine magazine.

Four years later, she was named a scholar of the prestigious 2009 Len Evans Tutorial.

This Chardonnay is one of many fabulous whites brought to life by Austin during her nine years as winemaker/manager at Bay of Fires Wines. She made them long, lean and understated. They won numerous awards as young wines and again as museum wines in the Tasmanian Wine Show.

'Wow! That colour looks incredible!' Austin responded to my SMS and photo, taken just after opening this luminous but pale-looking 2006.

That was just a portent of good things to come. The wine sat very comfortably in the glass once poured, then performed a dance of the seven veils over the next half-hour or so. Subtle oak. Hardly any perceptible bottle-age. Precision-cut lemon and grapefruit nuances mingling with subtle leesy notes. There's that word again. Subtle. Impressive length of flavour with extraordinary finesse. Wonderful, life-sustaining natural acidity. Chablis-like stature. Grand Cru Vaudésir perhaps. Whatever.

It was sublime. Bravo Fran.

Source: Retail purchase many years ago. Cellared in cool-climate Tasmania.