An Australian wine from the Yarra Valley near Melbourne has won champion wine of show at the 2009 International Chardonnay Challenge in Gisborne tonight.

The Coldstream Hills wine team was already out celebrating when the call came from New Zealand to say their 2007 Reserve chardonnay had won three of the top awards at the show. They were out toasting a run of successes they had earlier in the year, with no inkling more good news was just a phone call away.

For winemaker Andrew Fleming and his team the accolades are bright spots in what has been a challenging year. They lost close to ten hectares of vineyard to the devastating February bush fire and went close to losing the winery had it not been for a fortunate wind change.

But their wines are no stranger to success. Last time they entered the International Chardonnay Challenge, the 2006 Coldstream Hills Reserve chardonnay was awarded  Reserve Champion of show.

This time they headed off around 520 other wines from all over the globe to take the top honours at the International Chardonnay Challenge.

‘The 2007 vintage was difficult – we had frost, drought and bush fires, not an ideal recipe for vintage,’ says Fleming.

The majority of the grapes come from their Briarston Vineyard, which is in the lower Yarra Valley and is planted with five different chardonnay clones. The remainder of the fruit came from a twenty-year-old vineyard from one of their growers, as well as a small percentage from the cool Upper Yarra.

The combination of sites and clones delivers a wine of complexity and length, with attractive fruit characters of white peach, citrus and quince and underlying barrel fermentation and stony, minerally notes.

‘At blending, the nuances from each batch always produce a wine of interest, which is more fun than actual work.’

Fleming says they seek layers in their wines, with the wines being predominantly fruit driven in style with underlying barrel fermentation, texture and length. Malolactic fermentation is not encouraged, as we aim to preserve as much natural acidity as possible, provided the wine is balanced.

He puts much of their success down to a top team. ‘We've had an amazing run for the past five years – long may it continue.’

The 2006 reserve won 13 trophies on both sides of the Tasman, but the International Chardonnay Challenge awards were the first for the 2007 Coldstream Hills Reserve Chardonnay.

‘I guess this wine surprised me more than the 2006 did – right from the word go I knew the 2006 would be smart but the 2007 has been a bit of a sleeper and needed a little more time to come together.’

Coldstream Hills processes around 1300 tonnes a year and made approximately 550 cases of the 2007 Reserve Chardonnay.

Chairman of judges Jane Skilton, Master of Wine, described the Coldstream Hills chardonnay as the ‘quintessential winner for lovers of chardonnay’.

‘It is an excellent example of the wine – it’s benefited from a little time in the bottle, is a complete style and showed well in what was a very strong line-up.’

Skilton, who returned to the competition for her seventh year, says the challenge has grown to a new level. ‘This is a local show run to international standards,’ she says.

She welcomed the new date of the show, heaped praise on the new venue and thoroughly enjoyed having the winemaking students from Tairawhiti Polytechnic as the challenge stewards. ‘It’s nice to see fresh young faces who are so keen to learn.’

And the wines they were bringing through showed that plenty of lessons had been learned by many out in the industry. ‘We’re certainly seeing far less obvious faults in the wines,’ says Skilton. ‘It made those that came back in the final line-up all the more special.’

It was a wide representation of all that was good about chardonnay – from the rich peachy styles, to the elegant, delicate, light, rich and complex.