Sidewood Mappinga Chardonnay 2024

95 POINTS

Sam Kim - Wine Orbit

Rich and complex with finesse, the wine shows golden peach, lemon sorbet, nougat, elegant oak, and almond meal notes on the nose. It's weighty and fleshy, delivering a linear mouthfeel and fine acidity, leading to a persistent, engaging finish. Gorgeously proportioned and balanced.

94 POINTS

Katrina Butler - Halliday Wine Companion

A poor flowering season and certainly a very trying vintage for vignerons has produced a concentrated and minuscule release for wine lovers. A touch of flintiness sits flush with white peach, nectarine, toasted hazelnut and grapefruit pith. The acidity is steely and minerally led – mouth-puckering in the best sense. Finger lime, ashed goat's cheese and orchard florals to close. Drinking well now, but cellar and follow its trajectory.

91 POINTS

Gary Walsh - The Wine Front

Bernard clones 95 and 76. Grapefruit and white peach, cream, cinnamon and cashew, a slight aniseed perfume. It has some creaminess and gloss, then a whack of grapefruity acidity kicks in giving it quite some bite and tang, a fine chalkiness to texture, hazelnut, spice and lemon zest on a bright finish of good length. Needs to relax a bit and maybe flesh out, so better from next year.

91 POINTS

2025 - Decanter World Wine Awards

Smoky character on the nose, with aromas or preserved lemons, lots of sweet fruit and oak. Tightly wound, crisp and juicy. Award: Silver - DWWA 2025

Jeremy Oliver

A spotlessly clean and fragrant chardonnay with bright forward peach/lemon and melon-like aromas, spicy notes of ginger and cloves and fresh butter/vanilla oak. The palate begins with some intense fruit and pleasing reductive complexity, but then moves quickly into a flavour-stripped and highly acidulated phase that extends all the way to its austere, excessively acidic finish. Fruit is stripped out as the acid attacks the palate and clips its length in a fashion that is seen all too often in contemporary Australian chardonnay.