Hirsch Hill Yarra Valley 'Toolangi' Chardonnay 2024

By now you have probably guessed I'm partial to a glass of wine or two! Yes, I do drink other drinks but wine with dinner after a day of parenting is, well ESSENTIAL!! I have visited many wineries and am part of quite a few wine clubs, and along with visiting local independent bottle shops, I pick up some GREAT bargains online. A good chunk of those come from winedirect.com.au and my mate Dan who is the business development manager there!

There is nothing better than a cooler evening, a bowl of Wild Mushroom Risotto and a bottle of pinot in hand. Well, the glass in hand but the bottle pretty close to hand too. It's a cracking match. This week thanks to my buddy Dan at winedirect.com.au, I am sipping a Picardy Pinot Noir. This Pinot comes out of Pemberton in WA. In fact, it's my first Pinot from WA. Thanks Dan, you gave me my first. 

The all-important Q - what wine should I drink as I cook this, whilst I eat it and open another bottle afterwards!!  This one was SIMPLE.  Chalk Hill Fiano from McLaren Vale.  I picked this one up from winedirect.com.au from my buddy Dan - a half-decent dude who might steer you in the right direction when choosing wine. ;) 

CSDBSP to those in the know, this dish has all the richness of duck and trimmings without killing your waistline.

Yarra Valley, just an hours drive east from Melbourne, is one of Australia's great cool-weather regions. Chardonnay lives happily here, granting the wines notes of peach and fig. The real standout is Pinot Noir, that fickle red that challenges winemakers everywhere. The Yarra terroir is very suitable, producing complex wines with deep notes of berry and plum.

History

In many ways, the Yarra Valley, VIC is one of the real survivors in the Australina wine industry. Vines and wineries were around as early as the 1830's, with names like St Huberts and Yeringberg garnering praise and getting attention overseas. Sadly, the economic downturn in the late 1800's hit the region's wineries hard, and by the 1930's vines were replaced by pasture. It was in the 1960's, as was the case elsewhere in Australia, that local Doc's got into the Yarra wine trade. This fostered a revival of plantings and winemaking in the region, with quality table wines popping up. St Huberts and Yeringberg re-opened, joined