New Release Bannockburn Single Sites
"If these pinots and chardonnays from 2025 are not the greatest ever, there are none better that we have ever made." - Gus Pollard, Bannockburn Vineyards.
This great vintage was a fine and well spaced out "relaxed" one (if any vintage can be relaxed); a warm and steady-ripening harvest where all the varieties ripened at different times and the hand-picking and grape processing took place in a measured, well-planned way. This is a luxury that winemakers love but rarely get! It started on St. Valentine's day and was finished about a month later on St. Pat's day. It's a vintage blessed by the saints!
As many of you know, I'm a white burgundy lover, and these 3 new single site chardonnays show an old-school burgundy-like density and weight with nuanced complexities and satisfying ageability. I can't wait to taste these in 5 and 10 years' time.
The pinots are bigger and more powerful than usual, showing less whole-bunch savoury / herbal / damp autumnal notes than in the past. The deep well of fruit supports all other components. Bravo Bannockburn.
Cheers, Randall.
Cheers, Randall.
Please email your order for straight or mixed 6-Packs: sales@randalls.net.au
2025 Estate Chardonnay
$75 | Offer: $69 Singles | $67 in Straight or Mixed 6
$
$149 in-Magnum
"There are yellow stone fruits characters here, and an array of sweet spice notes, but it’s the flesh, the rush and the juice of grapefruit and ripe pear flavours that both dominate and seduce. This wine really does make you dive quickly in for more. There’s a subtle smokiness, some tonic and mineral-like notes, and an especially noticeable (extra) linger to the finish. This is one of those wines where the acidity itself feels flushed with flavour. The aftertaste then adds some pebble-stone characters, just because it can. What a wine." 96 Pts. - Campbell Mattinson, The Wine Front
2025 Estate Pinot Noir
$75 | Offer: $69 Singles | $67 in Straight or Mixed 6
$
$149 in-Magnum
"The first word that came to mind was unsweet. I’m not even sure that’s a word. This is a particularly earthen Pinot Noir with root vegetable characters running through black cherry, chicory, woodsmoke and fistfuls of roasted spices. I’m tempted to call this Pinot Noir for grown-ups but that’s a silly phrase so I’ll refrain. We get beautiful, fine-meshed, grapey tannin here, and sinewy characters, and a genuine, savoury push of flavour through the finish. I’m as certain as I can be that this wine will mature well."
95 Pts. - Campbell Mattinson, The Wine Front
2025 Winery Block Chardonnay
Offer: $84 | $75 in Straight or Mixed 6-Packs
If you are lucky enough to line the three single site wines up side by side this one comes across as the most oatmealy and old school Meursault-like. It is super complex, rich, deep and full flavoured. The 40% new oak is buried and the old-vine (1981!) character comes through in the superb depth. I think it's bound for higher scores! R.
"This wine is a perfect expression of chardonnay fruit flavour. It saw 40% new oak but the fruit has largely swallowed it whole, leaving a wine filled with fleshy stone fruit, pear, grapefruit and citrus flavour, with gently floats of vanilla, toast and grilled peach riding seamlessly throughout. It makes it all look easy and yet the extension of flavour is excellent, as is the length of the finish. There’s genuine verve here but, too, there’s flavour in every nook." 95Pts. - Campbell Mattinson, Wine Front
"This wine is a perfect expression of chardonnay fruit flavour. It saw 40% new oak but the fruit has largely swallowed it whole, leaving a wine filled with fleshy stone fruit, pear, grapefruit and citrus flavour, with gently floats of vanilla, toast and grilled peach riding seamlessly throughout. It makes it all look easy and yet the extension of flavour is excellent, as is the length of the finish. There’s genuine verve here but, too, there’s flavour in every nook." 95Pts. - Campbell Mattinson, Wine Front
2025 Grigsby Chardonnay
Offer: $84 | $75 in Straight or Mixed 6-Packs
This wine has a little more exotic quince paste / ripe kiwi-fruit aromas a difference to the other two, perhaps the different clone playing a key (it's from Bernard 76 whereas the other two are from the classic old P58 clone). It tightens up on the palate, and is impressively rich and long. R.
"... grown on the estate’s close-planted (8333 vines per hectare), certified organic vineyard. This is in super form. The fruit is luscious, joyous and generous and it has a bit of x-factor too. Stonefruit, hay, pear, flint, steel, cashew, cedar and fennel notes combine into one gorgeous, seamless whole. No need to think about this one: from the first sip, you’re on. There’s oak evident on the finish but there’s so much fruit riding with it." 95+Pts. - Campbell Mattinson, Wine Front
2025 S.R.H. Chardonnay
Offer: $119 | $106 in Straight or Mixed 6-Packs
$252 En-Magnum
In the 3 single-site blind line up, this showed a more "rocky", "slight chabliesque" character, albeit with huge power and richness. This is not surprising when you learn that these 12 rows planted in 1976 have the shallowest top-soil and the roots are growing deep in the underlying limestone. This is bound for greatness over the next 15 years or more. R.
"70% went through malo. The freshness and the length. The flavour too, of course. This is just plain yum, to be frank. It tastes of pears and peaches, steel and citrus, with cashew, tonic water and cedar notes delivered hand-in glove, and they are light gloves at that. This is fluid flavour delivered at its most fancy. It’s plainly excellent."
95Pts. - Campbell Mattinson, Wine Front
95Pts. - Campbell Mattinson, Wine Front
2025 Olive Tree Hill Pinot Noir
Offer: $84 | $75 in Straight or Mixed 6-Packs
"Bannockburn’s Olive Hill Pinot Noir is grown on vines planted in 1976, which means that it’s grown on Bannockburn’s oldest vines.
This is very Bannockburn. It’s a mix of earth, undergrowth, beet and mineral notes, pulled along by ripe red/black cherry flavours, and all framed by firm, iodine-and-mineral tannin. It’s earth, fruit, sinew and bone in one; there’s nothing overtly sweet up-front and yet there’s plenty to hold onto. This is right in the Bannockburn groove, I would say." 94Pts. - Campbell Mattinson, Wine Front
2025 De La Terre Pinot Noir
Offer: $84 | $75 in Straight or Mixed 6-Packs
"Bannockburn’s De La Terre vineyard was planted (to high density: 8333 vines/ha) in 2007, and certified organic in 2021.
High quality release. This puts on such an exceptional display of finesse. Red cherry and strawberry flavours run through an open field of earth and twigs and leaves, drawing blood as they frolic. Tannin is sheeted, fine, earthen, distinctive. Ash notes kick up. Smoke from a fire on which vegetables char. There’s silk and indeed cedar but it all feels so fine; it’s a wine that is not so much crafted as laced. Essence of Bannockburn, is this wine." 96Pts. - Campell Mattinson, Wine Front
2025 Serre Pinot Noir
Offer: $119 | $106 in Straight or Mixed 6-Packs
$252 En-Magnum
$252 En-Magnum
"Serré, planted in 1984 and extended in 1986, certified organic in 2021, planted to 1.2m x 1.2m vine spacing.
This release is both powerful and taut. It’s also noticeably mineral, which helps give it that something extra. It offers a concentrated burst of dark cherry flavour, diving into plum, into rust, ground spice and sweet earth. It’s one of those wines that seems to hold onto you, once you take a sip, such is its grip and its authority. The fruit itself wears a corduroy shirt of cedarwood, slim-fit; the body beneath is guns out; muscular and lithe. This is serious stuff, and seriously good."
96Pts. - Campell Mattinson, Wine Front
96Pts. - Campell Mattinson, Wine Front
Please email your order for straight or mixed 6-Packs: sales@randalls.net.au
