Brown Bag Tasting: Viognier- Sydney 2025

A beauty, offering a more fruit-forward, sexy, supple style as well as textbook peach, white flowers, and honeysuckle aromas and flavors. Textured and balanced, with a great finish, it's ideal for drinking over the coming 4-6 years. JEB DUNNUCK

The vintage plays an inevitable role here, it is a gorgeous rendition of this wine, the white that accompanies Stephanes revered reds, and has the track record to back it up, as well as the mountains of press. This is the current release to Australia and the few years in the bottle have drawn out more of those robust, ripe and rich stone fruit notes. It's still essentially a pup but you see some move towards expansion on the palate and more nuance now on the nose. More clearly defined aromatics that offer up hedonistic and sweetly perfumed fruit, wild flowers, nectarine and a glass full of mixed citrus juice (only way I can think of describing that character). It leans in to sensuality in the mouth, there it caresses as it easily fills your palate with its delectable fruit salad like array of flavours. It is easy to miss the force behind it, almost, it really hits the finish hard with a burst of rocky minerality and an emphatic punch of intensity that leaves your palate feeling stained. For me this is where I would like to drink this wine. While both youthful enthusiasm and some richer elements are at play. There is no doubt in my mind that most fans of Condrieu will ignore that and throw this in the cellar for a decade. Don't get me wrong, the wine will be super then too. I just love the power that 19 brings with the vigour and liveliness of Stephane's style and I find this part of its life to be particularly enjoyable. It's a tremendous effort. ROSCOE  

More product information will be added here soon! In the meantime, if you do have any questions at all about this product or others in our store, you can contact us by phone or email. Our friendly and experienced team are always happy to assist - we love drinking, selling, talking about and being in and around wine!

More product information will be added here soon! In the meantime, if you do have any questions at all about this product or others in our store, you can contact us by phone or email. Our friendly and experienced team are always happy to assist - we love drinking, selling, talking about and being in and around wine!

Am I changing, or is it something else? I feel drawn to the Viognier. I know the story is all Chardonnay and Pinot Noir at By Farr, but my word, if this wine isn't consistently pure joy and vinous perfection. Viognier has a gift to blow out, become rich and a little overbearing, but here, in Bannockburn, a place familiar with sunlight, where Viognier's gift could easily shine, they hold the reins tightly. A thoroughbred, poised, rippling and ready to excite. (I know how weird that sounds, just bare with me).

So what does that mean exactly? In my head, it means I can tell the wine is made from the Viognier grape, but it's refreshing enough for me to want to drink more without it being too rich or cloying. The tasting note would read something like this. A note of apricot, not jam, but fresh and ripe off the tree, still warm from the last rays of the sun. I think if you can feel on your skin, a memory of what a wine smells like, it's already done its job. At least for me it has. A stony, crunchy acidity, that tastes like white pebbles being rubbed together in your hands in a dry river bed, feels like. Can you hear it? Can you feel it too?

The texture of the wine fits easily into the framework of modern Australian Chardonnay, but those exotic fruit notes set it apart. For those of you who have the luxury of cellaring wine, or more importantly, have greater self control than I do, a couple of years in the cellar will bring back even more memories. BEN KNIGHT