Mud House Marlborough Chardonnay 2011 – $

I gave the Riesling a taste a week or so back, and today I saw the stablemate Chardy was on special:

The wine is light straw. Unoaked. There are clean white peach notes on the nose. Fruit is fresh and tangy on palate, with hints of honey, but little complexity. The lack of oak here does remove one of the pillars of a good chardonnay – structure. Without the oak the sweet fruit flavours are front and centre, and there is less balance of the natural acidity. If the idea is to produce unoaked chardonnays, then I’d like more minerality in the Chablis style.