2025 L.A.S. Vino Chardonnay 'Wildberry Springs'
This 30-year-old vineyard, smack bang in the middle of Willyabrup, has always produced some of my favourite Margaret River chardonnays. The winemaking all adds up to a wine with tremendous energy, a degree of tension, and compelling vibrancy. The textural feel is remarkable, with a subtle, lightly roasted cashew character emerging. Exceptional wine.
97 Points - Ray Jordan, W.A. Wine Review
2024 L.A.S. Vino Chardonnay 'Wildberry Springs'
A warmer vintage yet a cool wine. Plenty of flavour and richness, but not at the expense of acidity, freshness and clarity. Some complexing sulphides add to this, sitting neatly with flavours of dried pears, lemon and lime, yet it's super savoury, spicy and moreish. Sits in the fuller-bodied range without being weighty; seems charged with energy/acidity, with a slip of texture - a little buttery and creamy.
95+ / 100 points , Jane Faulkner - Halliday's Wine Companion
2024 L.A.S. Vino Chardonnay 'Wildberry Springs'
Old vine Willyabrup chardonnay, fermented in a combination of clay amphora and barrels for ten months, all at the hand of tour-de-force wine-maker-person Nic Peterkin.Concentration of flavour here is excellent, as too is the length of the finish. No signs of a difficult vintage here. Seaspray, green pineapple, cedar, pine, citrus and cooked apple characters sift through hay and rosemary-accented tonic. It smells, feels and tastes the goods, and everything feels well prosecuted.
94 Points -Campbell Mattinson, The Wine Front
2023 L.A.S. Vino Chardonnay 'Wildberry Springs'
'Provides a striking difference from the Barrels of Metricup, as a result of the more typical gravelly loam soils of the vineyard. A bracing and linear thread runs deep through the intensity of the palate. Distinctive lemon and cut lime with a peaches and cream texture. Super wine.'
97 Points
Ray Jordan 'The West Australian Wine Guide'
2023 L.A.S. Vino 'Wildberry Springs' Chardonnay
"Generous smoky/flinty reduction overlying ripe grapefruit aromas —a classic Gin Gin clone wine. Superb fruit: very regional and very Gin Gin. Powerful flavour teamed with refinement and penetrating length. A real finesse chardonnay and quite superb."
96/100
The Real Review (Huon Hooke)
2023 L.A.S. Vino 'Wildberry Springs' Chardonnay
"Fermented in amphora and barrels, half and half. Of the oak, 30% is new. Gin gin clone, for the clone spotters. Lees stirring employed. A very lively chardonnay, set to medium weight, a strong sense of minerality running through the wine. Scents of ozone, sea spray, margaritas with salt rims, tonic water and bay leaf. A beauty to sniff on. Flavours sway between limey margaritas, tonic, sweet lemon and light gingery spice. It's got this pleasing saline, talc and briny chew to it too. Really good drinking here."
95/100
The Wine Front (Mike Bennie)
2023 L.A.S. Vino 'Wildberry Springs' Chardonnay
Smells of a lime daiquiri – salty, tangy yet waxy, textural and flavoursome. Riper in style, in terms of fruit weight, with white nectarine/peach to the fore and grapefruit, too. Some funky sulphides, all smoky and flinty, creamy, light lees and a savouriness throughout yet there’s a slip of sweetness from the oak with warm spices, too. It lingers, it’s complex, detailed and as compelling as it is delicious.
95/100
Jane Faulkner -Halliday's Wine Companion-
2023 L.A.S. Vino Chardonnay 'Wildberry Springs'
'The 2023 Wildberry Springs Chardonnay is ripe and full flavored, with yellow peach, lemon verbena, preserved citrus rind and salted cashews. The palate is threaded together with saline acidity and exotic dry spices—sa!ron, fennel seeds and cheesecloth/lanolin. The wine is opulently styled and quite ripe, but it works. Usually, these wines are lower in alcohol, but in the context of this dry, mild season, the ripeness sits well within the wine. There is something quite grown-up/sophisticated about the wines from this vintage, and it shows in this wine.'
95 Points - Erin Larkin
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
2022 L.A.S. Vino 'Wildberry Springs' Chardonnay
"As is the L.A.S. way, this is complex yet oh-so-satisfying. It has a great depth of flavour with stone fruit and poached quinces, spicy with cinnamon quills, ginger and some coriander seeds, a hint of aniseed and an alluring wet stone/petrichor character – there's a lot going on here, folks. It’s textural with lovely phenolics, which add to the shape on the palate. Nic Peterkin builds lots of texture into his chardonnays without them every becoming too big or too much of a good thing: a Goldilocks wine, as in just right."
95/100
Halliday Wine Companion (Jane Faulkner)
2022 L.A.S. Vino 'Wildberry Springs' Chardonnay
Apples to start in various forms, fresh, desiccated, and baked, along with notes of sweet pastry, baked crumble, ginger biscuits, cloves, nutmeg and a bit of toffee. It's full in flavour with chewy pineapple bits, a minty aftertaste and cedar spice. It's built with solid blocks of acidity upfront and creaminess in the back. Slate-like mineral' feel in the middle. Very flavoursome Chardonnay it is.
94 Points
The Wine Front
2021 L.A.S. Vino 'Wildberry Springs' Chardonnay
"The wine is mineral and pure, but with a wall of savory tannin that rises up through the ranks. This has plenty of spice in the mix—white pepper, fresh ground nutmeg, something earthy (perhaps white truffles or fresh field mushrooms) and layers of stone fruit. Beautiful. An engaging wine of precision and line. It will only get better as it emerges from its shell."
95+ /100 Erin Larkin -Robert Parker Wine Advocate-
2020 L.A.S. Vino 'Wildberry Springs' Chardonnay
"Predominantly (90%) Gingin clone, the rest a mix. Long primary fermentation (all wild yeasts) of 10 months, mlf in that time. Fresh curry leaf, white peach, crushed cashew, flat leaf parsley, red apple skins, a whack of pink grapefruit and layers of orchard flowers, gum leaf and licorice. What a cracking wine this is. A kaleidescopic array of fruit, a flinty, wild kind of countenance, and a long, sinuous line of flavour that gives a little 'come hither' at the final turn. Peterkin doesn't make enough of this wine. Or perhaps that's the secret."
97/100
Erin Larkin -Halliday's Wine Companion-
2020 L.A.S. Vino 'Wildberry Springs' Chardonnay
"Light straw-yellow colour, with a mellow, savoury, multi-layered bouquet with some buttery touches, yellow fruits, fresh herbs, a smoky hint and a trace of parmesan cheese. It's soft and savoury, texturally interesting—slightly viscous and almost granular—rich, yet refined and subtle, the finish lingering well."
95/100Huon Hooke - The Real Review -