Giant Steps Bastard Hill Vineyard Yarra Valley Chardonnay 2025
£45.95
The wine
Wild honey, elderflower and chamomile on the nose, edged with a subtle lanolin spice. The palate is layered and textural, carried by fresh acidity to a long, persistent finish. Bastard Hill makes Chardonnay of purity, concentration and texture, and 2025 shows all three.
The vineyard sits at 300 to 400 metres in Gladysdale, in the upper Yarra Valley: thirty-one hectares, thirteen of them under vine, planted only to Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. The name is the growers’ verdict on the slope. Ray Guerin planted it in 1986 for top-end sparkling wine, but the still wines soon stood out, and the Chardonnay comes mainly from the south-facing Block 7 on red volcanic loams. A wet winter and a warm, dry spring and summer gave clean, healthy fruit, picked slightly early. Hand-picked and whole-bunch pressed, the juice ran by gravity straight to 500-litre French oak puncheons without settling, fermented with no malolactic, then spent nine months in oak, 17% of it new.
The producer
Giant Steps
View all Giant Steps winesGiant Steps is one of Australia's leading estates for Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, based in the cool Yarra Valley of Victoria. Founded by Phil Sexton, it has become a benchmark for single-vineyard wines of purity and precision. The wines rank among the country's finest.
The vineyards lie across the Yarra Valley's varied soils and altitudes, each site vinified separately to capture its character. Cool nights and careful, low-intervention winemaking give freshness and detail. Giant Steps is a champion of Yarra terroir.
The range runs from the fresh, regional Yarra Valley Chardonnay and Pinot Noir to the acclaimed single-vineyard bottlings from Sexton and Applejack. Each is pure, mineral and beautifully balanced. They show the Yarra at its most refined.
Giant Steps wines combine cool-climate freshness with real depth and craft. They are elegant, age-worthy and consistently outstanding. Among the best of modern Australia.
