Chalk Bacchus 2024
£19
White · 11% · In stock
Elderflower, Grapefruit, Cut grass
White · Vintage 2023
Vale Chardonnay 2023
£26 / 75cl
4.8 (640)A still Chardonnay with a light touch of old oak. Cool-climate and textured, somewhere between Chablis and the chalk it grew on.
- Pear
- Hazelnut
- Lemon
- Flint
In stock: ships next working day
- Tasting fee back. Buy six bottles on the day and your tasting fee comes off the bill.
- Next-day delivery. Order by 1pm Monday to Thursday; free on 12 bottles or more.
- Corked? We replace it. Any faulty bottle, any vintage, replaced or refunded. Just send a photo.
In the glass
Ripe pear and citrus over a gently creamy texture, with hazelnut from the oak and a flinty finish.
With food
Roast chicken, scallops, mushroom risotto.
How it's made
- Grapes
- Chardonnay 100%
- Made
- Fermented and aged nine months in 500-litre French oak, a third new.
- Alcohol
- 12%
- Bottle
- 75cl
- Serve
- 10–12°C.
- Production
- 4,100 bottles
About this wine
Not every Chardonnay on the estate goes into sparkling wine. In warmer years we keep the ripest rows from the middle of the slope aside and make a still wine from them, in large, mostly seasoned French oak.
2023 gave us fruit with real ripeness and good acid, and nine months in barrel has added texture and a note of hazelnut without taking away the freshness. It sits somewhere between a Chablis and a white Burgundy, with a flinty finish that is all Ledbourne.
It will drink well until around 2029, and it is the white we recommend for dinner rather than the garden.
“Lunch at a long table between the rows, a glass of each wine with each course. The Bacchus with the crab tart is the best thing I ate all summer.”
