There is a lot to be said about owning your own vineyard. Firstly, you tend to find out pretty early where the hidden gems are and in this instance it is the Valley Chardonnay from Lansdowne which is sourced from two of their Chardonnay blocks. The wine has a few tricks with some malolactic fermentation, old oak treatment and then left to its own devices. This is pure Chardonnay with a touch of citrus and underripe stone fruit which balanced acidity and texture.

Though Lansdowne vineyards' home to the slowest growing vines in Adelaide Hills, it's certainly never a dull moment for the young hustling family behind it, Eliza and Tass ('Tosh')! This Young Gun duo is making some tremendously exciting small-batch minimal intervention production that are turning heads to the Hills in hope of tasting their hard-to-get-your-hands-on wines. The vineyard is perched at 350m above sea level in the Forreston Valley where it experiences a Mediterranean climate with cool wet winters and warm dry summers that linger into long stretched autumns. Stunning early sunsets over the vineyards and cool air pooled in the valley under the starry skies make for an ideal temperature fluctuation (diurnal swing) which ensures the grapes ripen slow and steady; a prerequisite for the kind of flavour complexity and elegance we see in the wines from Lansdowne. Eliza and Tosh believe in the importance of sustainability and transparency in their wine which means they take a full-love, but hands-off approach to make sure their wines sing in the same key as their unique roots.