2025 Giant Steps Winery Chardonnay 750ml

Overview

A medium-bodied, oaked Chardonnay from the Yarra Valley. The 2025 vintage combines exceptional fruit concentration and weight with the freshness, balance and tension associated with cool-climate Chardonnay.

Vintage

A generous, wet winter replenished soil moisture before a warm, dry spring provided excellent conditions during flowering and fruit set. Despite the dry growing season, temperatures remained close to average. Harvest arrived earlier than usual and progressed quickly, producing fruit of exceptional quality, concentration and weight.

Winemaking

All fruit was hand-picked and hand-sorted in the vineyard, then chilled overnight to 4°C. The Chardonnay was whole-bunch pressed and transferred to French oak puncheons with full solids. Wild fermentation took place in French oak, comprising 19% new and 81% seasoned puncheons, with daily stirring during fermentation to build texture. Ten percent of the barrels underwent malolactic fermentation. The wine was subsequently matured on full lees in a reductive environment without stirring, before blending and bottling in November.

Critic Reviews

94 Points — Campbell Mattinson, The Wine Front
“What a delicious expression of cool-climate chardonnay this wine presents. For value and for quality you could ask for little more. It’s squeaky with flavour, of the peach and citrus and grapefruit kind, with pear, brine and roasted nut characters also present – but a long way from being dangerous. It sounds boring – it’s not – but cohesion and balance are the heroes here. It’s a wine of tension, flavour, complexity and spread, and of a bit extra too, but none of these assets is pushed too hard. Absolutely Yes on this one.”
Published 14 July 2026

Specifications

• Vintage: 2025
• Grape Variety: Chardonnay
• Region: Yarra Valley, Victoria, Australia
• Alcohol: 12.8%
• Production Attributes: Hand-picked, hand-sorted and whole-bunch pressed
• Fermentation: Wild fermented in French oak puncheons; 10% malolactic fermentation
• Maturation: Matured on full lees in a reductive environment without stirring
• Oak Type: French oak puncheons; 19% new and 81% seasoned
• pH: 3.08
• Acidity: 6.3 g/L