2017 By Farr GC Cote Vineyard Chardonnay

GC is Nick Farr’s tribute to his father Gary and what he has achieved in the Geelong region and also what he has contributed to Australian Chardonnay and Pinot Noir over a 40 year career. The wine is matured in French oak, 35% new, for approximately 10 months.

An essay in refinement and power this is now firmly entrenched as one of Australia’s great Chardonnay’s.

Brilliant pale straw colour with distinctive tints of green around the outskirts and a watery hue. Greeting the olfactory senses is a superb matrix of aromas led by white peaches, ripe nectarines and dried honey with a gun flint overlay. Cashew, biscuity nougat characters and spice notes then chime in to complete a complex picture. Firing on all cylinders, breathtaking intensity and length are counterpointed by a sublime freshness giving the palate a high wire act like balance. Refined yet brimming with richness and possessing a creamy textural feel, the mouth is engulfed with generous flavours of stone fruit, dried honey, cashew, biscuity nougat, citrus and subtle infusions of gun flint. Clean dry finish with an exceptionally long aftertaste of ripe white peaches, dried honey, biscuity nougat characters, lightly spiced cashew and traces of gun flint. Stunning.
Divine drinking now or cellar 5-6 years.
Alc. 13%

Other Reviews….
Among the finest chardonnays in this country, this is as sleek and polished as it texturally compelling, purring across a saline lick of phenolics, praline and slick oak handling. Yet it is the wine's sheer effortlessness: dense and intense of flavour on one hand; stealth and an uncanny cool, on the other; creeping to an apogee of complexity with every sip. A meld of synergistic sites, rootstock, clone, vineyard management and a deft, soothing hand in the winery. Class. Drink by 2027.
98 points
Ned Goodwin - James Halliday's Australian Wine Companion

GC references founder Gary Charles Farr – but it could stand for grand cru! Vines planted on exposed slopes with loam, limestone, volcanic, clay and buckshot stone strewn soils produce awesome power and complexity. Still, this is a thoroughly Australian Chardonnay, with ripped, muscular fruit, salty cashew and creamy almond, cut with zesty lime and flint. Plenty of phenolic, savoury chew makes for a compelling, resonating finish. 

97 points
Sarah Ahmed - Decanter Magazine

Tasted blind in a fair sized bracket of Chardonnay, and I think this was my favourite wine. I don’t try By Farr wines very often, so nice to have it bob up like this.
Ripe lime, white flowers and vanilla cream, stony things. Intense lime and lime rind, almost like a lime spider, smoky and flinty, core of intense acidity, really bursts through the finish. Pure, and yet full-throttle. Crikey. Drink 2020-2028.
96 points
Gary Walsh – The Wine Front