Shanteh Wale, The Wine Pilot, May 2023
It's always great to see the incarnation of M3. I tend to think of this wine in a similar vein to how Champagne houses exemplify their non vintage champagne. An apex wine of the brand but like with all great Maisons this wine continues to evolve and transcend with each vintage. The 2022 vintage encompasses an intensity to the fruit with slick and schmick oak in support. Wild jasmine, honeysuckle, lemonade fruit and yellow nectarines. Baked peach cobbler and candied ginger lolly. This is the self confident salesman in the room and I'm buying every word he says. Impossible not to find this absolutely delicious, no matter how hard you try. So stop trying. Give in, roll over and submit. They have done it again! Utterly bedazzling and with elegance and watertight foundations. Drink now, put some away for a rainy day. Drink with a whole lobster served in its shell and be cavalier about it. 95 Points.
Andrew Graham, Australian Wine Review, May 2023.
This a great M3, albeit in a rather tightly focused cool year style. It’s only going to get better and better too. Barrel fermented and spends nine months in oak this vintage. Excellent expression is what wins the race for me here – a little nougat, a little milk bottle reduction but fruit, too, complemented by vanilla bean oak. It doesn’t feel ungenerous, even if the palate has a little youthful rawness. Cool, in the just-ripe white peach mode, with these perfect lines, the palate growing and growing, even if the acidity feels a bit abrupt (a little more malo wouldn’t go astray). Classy, superb Chardonnay regardless. Best drinking: next year, and for a decade no problem. 94 Points.
Andrew Caillard MW, The Vintage Journal, April 2023
Pale colour. Lovely white peach, nectarine, grapefruit tonic water aromas with grilled nut, hint marzipan notes. Delicious drinking wine with plentiful peach, nectarine, apricot flavours, fine chalky textures, classical creamy notes and underlying marzipan, hint vanilla notes. This is a text book modern Adelaide Hills Chardonnay; not a long term keeper but it's brilliantly balanced and ready to enjoy. Like Penfolds Bin 389 Cabernet Shiraz, M3 has become a classic wine of first resort with buyers wanting consistency and reliability. Drink now – or keep for a while. 95 Points.
Huon Hooke, The Real Review, March 2023
Very light, bright colour; the nose slightly fusty with dried-flower heads, dried herbs and a little toasted almond. A subtle trace of butter shortbread; a wheaty/Weetbix overtone. Good depth of flavour, soft and properly dry, with a savoury follow-through, accessible now but also promising to reward a little cellar time. 93 Points.
Ned Goodwin MW, Halliday Wine Companion, February 2023
A sleek, mid-weighted & highly contemporary chardonnay, embellishing a pungent mineral chassis with roasted cashew, nougat and curdy creaminess. Vanilla-cedar oak, an integrated framework. Apricot pith, white peach and nectarine, too. The acidity, palpably natural of feel and really juicy, towing impressive length. Among the better recent iterations of this rightly popular cuvée. 93 Points.
Shanteh Wale, The Wine Pilot, May 2023
It's always great to see the incarnation of M3. I tend to think of this wine in a similar vein to how Champagne houses exemplify their non vintage champagne. An apex wine of the brand but like with all great Maisons this wine continues to evolve and transcend with each vintage. The 2022 vintage encompasses an intensity to the fruit with slick and schmick oak in support. Wild jasmine, honeysuckle, lemonade fruit and yellow nectarines. Baked peach cobbler and candied ginger lolly. This is the self confident salesman in the room and I'm buying every word he says. Impossible not to find this absolutely delicious, no matter how hard you try. So stop trying. Give in, roll over and submit. They have done it again! Utterly bedazzling and with elegance and watertight foundations. Drink now, put some away for a rainy day. Drink with a whole lobster served in its shell and be cavalier about it. 95 Points.
Andrew Graham, Australian Wine Review, May 2023.
This a great M3, albeit in a rather tightly focused cool year style. It’s only going to get better and better too. Barrel fermented and spends nine months in oak this vintage. Excellent expression is what wins the race for me here – a little nougat, a little milk bottle reduction but fruit, too, complemented by vanilla bean oak. It doesn’t feel ungenerous, even if the palate has a little youthful rawness. Cool, in the just-ripe white peach mode, with these perfect lines, the palate growing and growing, even if the acidity feels a bit abrupt (a little more malo wouldn’t go astray). Classy, superb Chardonnay regardless. Best drinking: next year, and for a decade no problem. 94 Points.
Andrew Caillard MW, The Vintage Journal, April 2023
Pale colour. Lovely white peach, nectarine, grapefruit tonic water aromas with grilled nut, hint marzipan notes. Delicious drinking wine with plentiful peach, nectarine, apricot flavours, fine chalky textures, classical creamy notes and underlying marzipan, hint vanilla notes. This is a text book modern Adelaide Hills Chardonnay; not a long term keeper but it's brilliantly balanced and ready to enjoy. Like Penfolds Bin 389 Cabernet Shiraz, M3 has become a classic wine of first resort with buyers wanting consistency and reliability. Drink now – or keep for a while. 95 Points.
Huon Hooke, The Real Review, March 2023
Very light, bright colour; the nose slightly fusty with dried-flower heads, dried herbs and a little toasted almond. A subtle trace of butter shortbread; a wheaty/Weetbix overtone. Good depth of flavour, soft and properly dry, with a savoury follow-through, accessible now but also promising to reward a little cellar time. 93 Points.
Ned Goodwin MW, Halliday Wine Companion, February 2023
A sleek, mid-weighted & highly contemporary chardonnay, embellishing a pungent mineral chassis with roasted cashew, nougat and curdy creaminess. Vanilla-cedar oak, an integrated framework. Apricot pith, white peach and nectarine, too. The acidity, palpably natural of feel and really juicy, towing impressive length. Among the better recent iterations of this rightly popular cuvée. 93 Points.
