Elderton Chardonnay

Australia, Eden Valley, 2001(!!)
Price: 19000 won from the foreigners super market in Hannam-dong.

I am not sure if Hannam supermarket is the best place to buy wine. Saw a 98 Dom Perignon there for 230000!! Nearly 70,000 more than we paid for a 96 vintage from Lotte in Jamsil. But I digress.
Saw this and will always be tempted by sub 20,000 bottles. Didn't notice it was the 2001 vintage though, perhaps due to the 2 pitchers of Cass prior to shopping.

Colour could almost be described as deep intensity lemon. Is this because of age or over oaking. Difficult to say. Certainly there has been a reasonable exposure to oak here.

The nose is rather good, still has fruit with a nice primary citrus kick followed up by the much more tropical elements you might expect from an Australian chardonnay. We are talking melon and pineapple here. Whats more interesting is a lovely honey complexity that has a definite creaminess to it.

The palate gives off the real oak sensation but this is not like some of the over-oaked wines of Australia, it is really well balanced with good acidity and citrus fruit. I suspect the oak has been toasted as there is the slightly toasty popcorn butteriness and then the fruit still coming through. Pineapple and melon follow from the nose though the honey is not so pronounced. It has suprisingly good length.

I am a little surprised by this wine, I assumed it would be past its best to be honest. There is still plenty of fruit and the obvious oak and malolactic fermentation is really well balanced. I would say this is extremely good value for a white wine in Korea. I am not sure how many bottles they had left and I may well be tempted to go and pick up a few more for everyday drinking.