23 Sep ‘Best in Show’ at DWWA 2020

2018 Equilibrio Chardonnay Receives ‘Best in Show’ (97 Points) at DWWA 2020

Soumah of Yarra Valley are delighted to announce our 2018 Equilibrio Chardonnay received ‘Best in Show’ (97 points) at the 2020 Decanter World Wine Award, the world’s largest and most influential wine competition. This year, 56 countries submitted 16,518 wines for judging and were tasted by 116 (socially distanced!) top wine experts including Masters of Wine and Master Sommeliers. Of the wines tasted, only 50 received the highly sought ‘Best in Show’ accolade, six of these were Australian and Soumah’s Equilibrio Chardonnay is one of those.

About the Wine.
The concept behind the Equilibrio range is to promote the very best barrels, clonal mix, and new oak integration to create a few cases that will benchmark the potential of each vintage. With several vintages and trials of different clones and oak use, Equilibrio was first released in 2017 using the Mendosa clone.

‘We are very vineyard-focused and wanted this wine to represent everything a premium Chardonnay should, celebrating the acid and balance as much as the fruit. Our Equilibrio has to be full of everything but with no edges; it’s a tightrope walk, and nothing is allowed to topple the balance,’ says Brett Butcher, Soumah’s vigneron.

The result is a wine that is opulent, generous, and composed with good oak integration all wound together with a citrus and nectarine, creamy freshness.

“Among all of the different regions where Chardonnay has impressed in Australia, the Yarra is perhaps the one where the fruit itself charms most readily from the off. This steel-green wine carries its oak very lightly, and the fruit sings out: nectarine, peach and dessert apple all draw the drinker into the glass. On the palate, the wine is soft, tender, almost juicy: its perfect ripeness apparent in that limpidity of expression, and in the seamless incorporation of vibrant and rounded acidity into a natural and succulent poise. The oak, once again, is almost invisible: a swelling of tone rather than flavour. The only danger with deliciousness of this order is that you might be tempted to drink it all too quickly. Fine quality raw materials suggest there’s no hurry here.” ~ Decanter World Wine Awards, 2020.

Experience Equilibrio with our exclusive six packs, available until 26 October. Click here for more.

Pictured: Scott McCarthy, Soumah’s Chief Winemaker, and his award-winning Equilibrio Chardonnay.