The trick to making Chardonnay (and any whites, actually) in a Mediterranean climate like McLaren Vale is to get the grapes into the winery nice and cool, which means they are usually picked at night. Picking in the cool of the night helps maintain acidity. We make our Four o’clock Chardonnay in batches, so that when it comes to blending the final wine, we have a few options to use to create a flavoursome and complex wine.

Some grapes are fermented in stainless steel tanks, some are fermented and then left on solids (the yeast which ferments the sugar in the grapes, to alcohol) and all of the components go through a cool ferment to preserve the peach and nectarine characters that we get from our chardonnay. We stop the wines from going through malolactic fermentation, which helps the wine keep its crunchy acidity. None of the wine spends any time in oak.