Oakridge Henk Vineyard Chardonnay 2024 Review

Named for a vineyard. Tastes like it earned the name.

One muses over the idea that naming a wine for a single block of land shows some confidence. It says 'we are not hiding behind blends or clever marketing. The land either delivers or it doesn't, and we are betting it does.' The Henk Vineyard at Woori Yallock in the upper Yarra has been delivering for Dave Bicknell at Oakridge for years now, and the 2024 is the latest and rather convincing instalment of that ongoing argument in favour of place over performance.

Oakridge needs no lengthy introduction. They have been Halliday's number one winery, best value winery, best this, best that. The accolades are starting to need their own spreadsheet. Bicknell has been quietly running the show for over twenty years now, which in Australian winemaking terms is practically geological. The Vineyard Series wines, of which the Henk is one, are his attempt to demonstrate that the Yarra Valley is not one thing but many things, and each block of red volcanic or grey clay soil has its own voice if you bother to listen. Henk vineyard sits on north-facing red volcanic soils at Woori Yallock.

The vines are handpicked, whole bunch pressed directly into 500-litre French puncheons. No shortcuts, no drama. And left on lees for fourteen months. The 2024 vintage brought a cool, wet spring and a dry, even autumn, which in Yarra terms is about as close to perfect conditions as anyone is going to admit on record.

At $48 it is, genuinely, one of the most difficult wines in Australia to argue against. One esteemed wine mind called it the best sub-$50 bottle in the country. They were not being silly. In the glass it opens with lemon zest, white nectarine, figs, and something flinty and mineral underneath that gives the whole thing a Chablis adjacent energy without being a pale imitation of it.

The palate is taut and focused. A clean acid line, lemon curd, a ribbony, almost silky texture somehow managing to be both restrained and generous. There's a grapefruit tang threading all the way through to a long, tapering finish. What the wine doesn't do is show off. It simply does what it does, quite brilliantly, and leaves you reaching for the bottle before you've finished the glass.

The 2024 has a silver medal from the Yarra Valley Wine Show, which is the sort of award to tell you the judges were paying attention but perhaps not yet fully awake. Give it another year or two in the bottle if you can manage it. If you can't, we understand.

The Wine Scoffer drinks on principle. No samples were solicited. Opinions are entirely their own. — Scoffermag.au

RRP $48

https://oakridgewines.com.au/

VIC | 2024 | Yarra Valley | 13.6

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