2024 Applejack Vineyard Yarra Valley Chardonnay, Giant Steps Single Vineyard

• Style: Single-vineyard cool-climate Chardonnay, bone-dry, lees-textured, no malolactic
• Taste: Nectarine, grapefruit and Granny Smith apple over creamy lees and toasted hazelnut
• Food: Roast chicken with beurre blanc, grilled fish or scallops, cream-sauce pasta, Brie
• Occasion: The quiet evening roast; dinner for someone who loves white Burgundy
• Serve: Cool, not ice-cold, in a large glass; drink now or hold up to five years

In the Glass — Tasting Notes

Giant Steps' 2024 Applejack Vineyard Yarra Valley Chardonnay rewards the quiet evening and the roasted bird: a single-site white from the upper valley that puts acidity and lees before oak, and the bottle we hand to anyone who says Australian Chardonnay is too big. Nectarine and toasted hazelnut drift beneath, while grapefruit and Granny Smith apple grip the palate—youthfully restrained yet bone-dry and mineral-sharp. The magic is its refusal to shout: the kind of purity you chase in fine white Burgundy but rarely find in a New World bottle. At 13.3% alcohol and fresh acidity, it's perfectly calibrated. Robert Parker's Wine Advocate gave it 96 points and The Wine Front 97, and for once the numbers describe what is actually in the glass. The estate earned 'Winery of the Year' at the 2025 Halliday awards for making exactly these wines: substance without excess.

The Winery — Giant Steps Single Vineyard

Phil Sexton founded Giant Steps in 1997; Mel Chester has run winemaking and viticulture since 2021. The house built its reputation on single-site Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, so start with this bottle and then work through everything else we list from the estate on our Giant Steps Wine shelf. The Applejack Vineyard sits at 300 metres in the upper Yarra Valley's basalt soils, yielding concentrated, mineral fruit. Ray Guerin planted the 12.5-hectare slope in 1997 and Phil Sexton bought it in 2013. Winemaking is restrained: hand-picked grapes ferment wildly in French oak, malolactic fermentation deliberately suppressed to preserve acidity. Whole bunches go to the press, the juice drops by gravity into 500-litre puncheons from Taransaud, Dargaud & Jaeglé and Mercurey, lees and all, and after nine months in barrel (only 15% of it new) the wine is bottled under screwcap. The 2024 vintage was compressed—cool spring and January rains set conditions, then warm February accelerated ripening into three weeks instead of six. Vegetarian, vegan, sustainable.

At Your Table — Food Pairing & Serving

This is a bottle for the cook who roasts a chicken properly and finishes it with a beurre blanc: the acidity cuts through the butter and the lees give the sauce something to lean on. It is just as happy with grilled fish or scallops, a cream-sauce pasta or a wedge of Brie, and wasted on anything with chilli or coriander. Serve it cool rather than cold, twenty minutes out of the fridge in a large glass, and skip the decanter. Drink it young for the grapefruit snap, or hold it up to five years and let it evolve. Either way, it's a wine that rewards patience in the glass, and it stands alongside every other bottle we've chosen because it refuses to shout. Buy it for the cook who likes white wine taut rather than buttery, open it with the next roast, and when you want more the path is short: its stablemates on our Giant Steps Wine shelf first, then the grape across the cellar on our Chardonnay shelf, then the Yarra Valley and Australia shelves for the region and the country around it.

Explore the cellar: Chardonnay · Yarra Valley · Australia · Giant Steps Wine