- Ralph Kyte-Powell, Epicure, The Age, June 2010
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The ever-reliable Pierro’s take on a regional dry white, a Semillon Sauvignon with a touch of Chardonnay to tune it up. Smells of citrus and herbs with a touch of stone fruits and tropicals too – a real fruit salad. The palate’s balanced nicely with attractive fresh melon flavours and bright acid. Drink young or age mid-term. 91/100
- Nick Stock, Wine 100, August 2010
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This wine is full and rich - honeydew and white peach to the fore. Bourne told us "on the nose, wild honey, pink grapefruit, apples and toffee. Hints of dusty spices and marzipan. Follows through well to a rich palate. A touch of warmth. Complex." I agreed on the warmth from alcohol, but found good restraint too. It's generously flavoured but maintains style. It's ready, yet will still age.
- Peter Gourmet Traveller Wine, Chardonnay Superstars, Aug/Sept 2010
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As Peterkin told me last year, his prestige label's opulent style is influenced by a full malolactic fermentation, though he picks with low malic acid followed by batonnage and time in barrel (12 months in 50% new French oak) to keep the buttery diacetyl notes at bay. It shows perfumed, vanilla pod edged canteloupe and white peach on the nose, with incipient nougat, which impression follows through on the palate, together with some attractively textured pear skin notes. Ample, yet well balanced, this is a beautifully tailored, perfumed Chardonnay, already giving lots of pleasure, but with the concentration and structure to eke out said pleasure factor for a good few years yet.
- Sarah Ahmed, The Wine Detective, 2010
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2008 Fire Gully Chardonnay
This chardonnay from Margaret River’s Pierro is styled differently to the powerfully built estate wine. Aromas and flavours of grapefruit and white peach are clean and inviting. Oak is a textural, mellowing input, not an aromatic or flavouring agent. Despite high alcohol, it is elegant, smooth , long and satifying. Four and a Half stars.
- Ralph Kyte-Powell, Epicure, The Age, August 2010
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Michael Peterkin's other label is sourced from his other Willyabrup vineyard, Fire Gully, which he acquired in 1998. A tight lemony/grapefurity nose and palate with sweet pear skin and ripe white peach typifies Western Australia's Gin Gin clone Chardonnay. Rich yet firmly structured with, as Langton's Andrew Calliard MW memorably puts it, an "al dente" texture, it has presence, indeed a youthful focus. Very good.
- Sarah Ahmed, The Wine Detective, 2010
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2007 Pierro Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot
One of the best examples of this blend yet from Mike Peterkin. Red fruits dominate the highly perfumed bouquet. An excellent vintage has allowed Peterkin to weave something special here with this excellent Bordeaux-style red wine.
Ray Jordan, 100 Top Reds for Winter Drinking, Fresh, West Australian, june 2010
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2005 Pierro Chardonnay
Has intense peach coulis, really subtle wood, and subtle cream lees too: this is seriously complex. Fruit complex. Gets Margaret River baby pineapple too as it evolves in the glass. Rich and tingly in the mouth, with a fine quartzy acid edge, masses of fruit in the middle, really tight and waiting to unwind. Shows fine oak as well but all is in tune. This is serious. -
Tim White, Australian Financial Review, February 2008
Chardonnay
Chardonnay is so good in Australia at the moment, in fact, that you could say we are in a golden age. -
Tim White, Australian Financial Review, February 2008
Pierro
Pierro’s thrilling chardonnay has never been better. Its other whites are invariably amongst Margaret River’s best, and the reds grow in stature each year.
Peter Forrestal, Sunday Times Magazine, October,2007
Mike Peterkin continues to stamp class and longevity all over his finest wine. Whilst the earlier vintages of Pierro Chardonnay were notable for their impressive richness and concentration, Peterkin has successfully sought a finer, purer expression of fruit which he has deftly married with oak and underpinned by a superbly textured chassis of chalky minerality. A classic.
Rating: 97/100
- Jeremy Oliver’s 2007 Wine of the Year Finalist, Top 10 Chardonnays
Mike Peterkin’s tiny plots of chardonnay offer individual characters that he fuses through barrel ferment, yeast lees contact and
malolactic fermentation. Peach, rockmelon and cumquat mix with complex flavours. It’s a a triumph of terroir and thoughtful
winemaking. -
Peter Bourne, Qantas Inflight Guide to Wine
Multi-faceted chardonnay of great character that reveals more as it airs and warms in the glass. Hazelnut, citrus and subtle buttery aromas with a balsamic, slightly volatile side. Tightly structured and intense, it has wonderful flavour, balance and more-ish drinkability.
- Huon Hooke, Gourmet Traveller Wine Oct/Nov 2007 Edition
I keep running out of superlatives for this great Margaret River wine. Once more showing stunning power and intensity with a
complex rich and intensely flavoured palate. You get new flavours and sensations with every sip. A chardonnay that you can savour to the last drop.
Rating: 96/100 - Ray Jordan’s Guide to Wine 2008
2007 Semillon Sauvignon Blanc LTC.
The LTC is the antithesis of the blend made by Peterkin’s near neighbour Vanya Cullen. Dominated by semillon, it is fresh, juicy,clean and bright, with guava, fresh lime and gooseberry flavours and a crunchy green apple acidity. A scrumptious dry white.
- Peter Bourne, Qantas Inflight Guide to Wine
It just never disappoints and clearly the benchmark for the style in Margaret River. Packs plenty into a tight palate and is just starting to reveal itself on tasting. Balanced and richly flavoured with control and finesse. -
Ray Jordan’s Guide to Wines 2008
2004 Pierro Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot LTCf
This is a multi-varietal blend that is just starting to hit its best form. A beautifully balanced wine with great structure. The oakfruit combination is excellent with firm fine tannins, subtle flavour complexity and a long profile. A wine of great elegance and refinement and one of the best yet from Pierro (LTCf stands for“little touch of cabernet franc.”) -
Ray Jordan’s Guide to Wines 2008
2004 Pierro Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot Reserve
Margaret River Cabernet Merlot at this level typically shows cassis and black berry concentration more than usually seen in other Australian regions, but there is also some dried fruit/fig and dark chocolate complexity. Margaret River wines of this quality -Pierro’s Cabernets blend, Cullen’s Diana Madeliene Cabernet Merlot, Vasse Felix’s top flight Heytesbury Cabernet and VoyagerEstate’s Cabernet Merlot blend come to mind. -
Mike Bennie,
National Liquor News, June 2007
Margaret River Chardonnay: Australia’s Best
It is difficult to argue with the proposition that Margaret River is Australia’s foremost region for Chardonnay, because so many great wines come from within its boundaries. Margaret River Chardonnay manages to combine an almost shocking voluptuousness with iron-clad structure, intensity with generosity, and sweet fruit with flowing natural acidity. The wines age surely, gaining in complexity while not sacrificing varietal character. They lie closer to the realm of Le Montrachet than any other Australian Chardonnays (and most of the rest of the world’s Chardonnays).
James Halliday - Varietal Wines - 2004
It would be an understatement to say that Margaret River is the greatest Chardonnay region in Australia today. It positively romped in, with six wines in the Top 21.
Huon Hooke - Gourmet Traveller Wine - 2004
Margaret River is Australia premium Chardonnay capital.
Wine Wise Vol. 26 No 5 - December 2004
Further evidence that WA, and Margaret River in particular, is producing the finest array of chardonnays in the land.
Ray Jordan - The West Australian - November 2004
One of the sublime group of chardonnays that mark Margaret River as the outstanding region for this variety in Australia.
Peter Forrestal - The Sunday Times Magazine - November 2004
2003 Pierro Chardonnay
Pierro is one of the few Australian wineries that could claim to have established a trend that many others have followed. Since the mid 1980s Mike Peterkin has crafted a Chardonnay of not only monumental power, but of simultaneously smooth and silky delivery. Recent years have seen more refinement and gentility about these wines, as typified by the the exceptionally stylish 2002 and 2003 editions.
Jeremy Oliver - The Australian Wine Annual - 2005
Wonderfully bright, luscious and vibrant chardonnay with rare intensity and concentration of fruit. It’s lightly smoky aromas of ruby grapefruit, honeydew melon and fresh pineapple overlie tightly integrated nuances of sweet, fine-grained vanilla oak. Smooth and juicy, its mouth-filling palate simply explodes with pristine and perfectly ripened flavours of tropical fruits and citrus, tightly underpinned by sweet oak and creamy, lees-derived complexity. It finishes long and persistent, with racy, citrusy acids and lingering tropical fruit flavours. Rating: 97/100. (Jeremy Oliver’s equal highest pointed Pierro ever)
Jeremy Oliver - The Australian Wine Annual - 2005
This smiles like the Hot Club of France at 2am: piquant ginger and nutmeg oak with acrid gunflint twist around sinuous acidity and silky peach and melon flesh in a wicked dance. I even expected a whoof of Gauloise smoke. This is typical of Mike Peterkin’s blockbusting Pierro style.
The Advertiser - Australia’s Top 100 Wines - November 2004
Wonderful aromas of cashew and grapefruit with a rich creamy leesy character. It has great richness and texture with beautiful balance between oak and fruit. There’s freshness on the palate, which is retained to a very long finish. Continues the impressive line for these chardonnays. Rating: 94/100.
Ray Jordan - Guide to Western Australian Wine - 2004/05
Pierro and Leeuwin have consistently dominated the Margaret River Chardonnay scene for 20 years. In terms of structure, this is full, sturdy, dense and long. In terms of texture it has Margaret River’s dry viscosity which it sheds with the years to reveal the cascading layers of flavours that this region’s greatest aged Chardonnays are famous for. The superb fruit and subtle texture combine to give an almost sumptuous, balanced, incredibly long mouthful of youthful chardonnay pleasure. This will age till 2012 or 2015 and is amongst Pierro’s best three to date in our view.
Invinity Fine Wine Brokers - 2004
The role model for so many of Australia’s more opulent and hedonistically proportioned chardonnays, this stunning expression of Margaret River Chardonnay by Mike Peterkin is now becoming more elegant.
Jeremy Oliver - The Australian Wine Annual 2005
2002 Pierro Chardonnay
Pierro is Margaret River’s most powerful chardonnay. It’s become a bit finer in recent years, but it is still a wine of majestic proportions. The acme of style: a fabulous, faultless wine that Australia should be proud of.
Ralph Kyte-Powell & Huon Hooke - The Penguin Good Australian Wine Guide 2004/05
A remarkable follow-up to the superb 2001. Complex and beautifully weighted, with a lingering, mealy grapefruit and nutty flavour mix. Peterkin adopts a full malolactic regime in the pursuit of palate texture and it’s perfectly demonstrated here. Retains a fine elegance despite the full malo.
Decanter Magazine UK 2004
Australia’s Best White Wine
Uncorked Magazine, Sydney Morning Herald and The Age - Spring 2004
Fine melon and cashew; long and intense; more refined and tight than the usual Pierro blockbuster. Rating 94 (Wines 94 - 100 Considered outstanding and of the highest quality, usually with a distinguished pedigree.
James Halliday - Wine Companion 2005
Pierro is consistently the most powerful of Margaret River Chardonnays and quite delicious in the right circumstances. The ‘02 is right in style, with rich nose of peach, melon, cashew and smoky oak. The palate is full-bodied and ultra-smooth with complex flavour that lasts and lasts. Excellent.
Ralph Kyte-Powell - The Age - April 2004
Another Margaret River producer with a superb record, whose wines have become more refined and stylish, and much more consistent thanks to the move to screw caps from 2002. The ‘02 is both retrained and tightly knit, showing marvellous compactness and finesse. Peaches and cream, grapefruit zest, said Forrestal. Grilled nuts, lemon curd, steely acidity, said Caillard. Rating: 96/100.
Huon Hooke - Gourmet Traveller Wine - Summer 2004
One of a sublime group of Chardonnays that mark Margaret River as the outstanding region for this variety in Australia. Mike Peterkin can be proud of the continued refinement of this outstanding vineyard. A thrilling wine.
Peter Forrestal - Sunday Times Magazine - November 2004
2001 Pierro Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot
My favourite of this trio is the complex, St. Julien-like 2001 Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot. It’s dark ruby colour is followed by a big, sweet perfume of cedar wood, tobacco leaf, black currant and vanilla. Elegant, medium-bodied, and well concentrated, it is ideal for drinking over the next 7-8 years.
Robert Parker Jr - The Wine Advocate - October 2004
A peak vintage for this Margaret River five-way blend, which includes cabernet franc, malbec and petit verdot. Dense, concentrated, fleshy fruit and extract, gutsy yet elegant. The aromas are more of red berries than black, sprinkled with leafy herbal notes. Best now to 2020.
Huon Hooke - Sydney Morning Herald - June 2004
A sumptuous, modern well-ripened cabernet blend with some slightly reductive and meaty complexity. It’s delicate perfume of small red berries and sweet vanilla/cedar oak precedes a plush, very smooth and rounded palate whose intense small berry flavours are married to an assertive combination of oak and firm, fine tannins.
Jeremy Oliver - The Australian Wine Annual 2005
Stylish and elegant, spare, slightly savoury frame, but a core of delicious red and blackcurrant fruit; fine tannins. Rating: 93
James Halliday - Wine Companion 2005
Pierro cabernet comes from Willyabrup, the very best place in Margaret River for Bordeaux red varieties. Always a more savoury Willyabrup cabernet blend than some of its illustrious neighbours, Pierro continues in that mould in 2001. It has black and redcurrant fruit on the nose along with clean earthy, herbal and light smoky-barrel aromas. A marvellous wine that is so close to the top it almost doesn’t matter.
Ralph Kyte-Powell and Huon Hooke - The Penguin Good Australian Wine Guide 2004/05
I have watched the development of this wine over the years to the point now where it stacks up against some of the best cab merlots in the district. This is clearly the best yet. The wonderful fragrant fruit with slightly perfumed red berry, plum and dusty savoury oak is beautifully appealing. The palate is brilliantly constructed with ripe firm tannins and silky fine fruit that builds powerfully to an awesome finish. Great wine. Rating: 94/100.
Ray Jordan - Guide to Western Australian Wine 2004/05
2004 Pierro LTC Semillon Sauvignon Blanc
As my absolute favourite from Margaret River, the Pierro has all the crispness required, with an extra element of complexity from LTC. Which, just quietly stands for a “little touch of Chardonnay”.
Ray Jordan - Guide to Western Australian Wine 2004/05
The LTC tends to be a blend of 50% semillon (some of which is matured in oak), 45% sauvignon blanc (which sees no oak) and 5% chardonnay (which may or may not be oak influenced). To add complexity, there are usually about 10 components of the blend, including those with or without malolactic fermentation, without oak or with new or old oak. The 2004 Pierro LTC has restrained spicy oak and nutty, leesy characters with some new-mown hay, lots of finesse, and a powerful refreshing finish. (Rated in the top 22 SBS blends in Australia).
Peter Forrestal - Gourmet Traveller Wine - Autumn 2005
Stylish, flavoursome and vibrant white Bordeaux blend of translucent brightness and vitality. Its fresh grassy aromas of gooseberries and passionfruit, plus its juicy, vibrant palate of tangy fruit are enhanced by suggestions of butter and citrus from a subliminal addition of chardonnay. Long and refreshing, it sits neatly above a fine, powdery backbone of chalky phenolics. Excellent shape and balance.
Jeremy Oliver - The Australian Wine Annual 2005
Pierro has long made one of the best blends in the Margaret River. They have always claimed their secret weapon is their LTC - Their Little Touch of Chardonnay. And they might be right. This wine has an excellent mouth-feel, a wonderful fresh acidity and the complexity some of the lesser styles lack. Scrumptious with whiting or flathead or snapper, or marwong, or wahoo or a yahoo...stop Stuart, not funny.
Stuart Gregor - Australia’s Best Value Drinking 2005
An elegant, savoury and nutty blend whose delicate, lightly smoky, grassy passionfruit aromas reveal nuances of herbs, melon and citrus. It’s long, elegant and refreshing with a reserved cut of fruit appropriately given a measured treatment of vanilla oak, before finishing clean and dry. Drink 200-2008+
Jeremy Oliver - On Wine - April 2004
A crisp and penetrating youngster with everything put together expertly for easy refreshment. There’s a green/grassy, lemony aroma with more of the same on the palate. A pleasantly soft mid-palate with good length and evolution of flavour, ending in dry, zippy finish.
Ralph Kyte-Powell and Huon Hooke - The Penguin Good Australian Wine Guide 2004/05
The green-tinged, pale straw colour of the 2003 Pierro LTC looks youthful in the glass. It’s nose is fresh and intensely tropical with pineapple, passionfruit and grassy-herbal scents. The palate is fresh and youthful, too, with a touch more richness than many WA dry white blends and good intensity of lush tropical, tangy fruits balanced by zesty acidity that finishes dry and fresh. It’s drinking well now and will continue to do so over the next couple of years.
Divine Food & Wine - Autumn 2004
A perfect example of high-quality “classic” style. Exceptional, intensely flavoured fruit is the first part of the equation. It’s been brought together and then a little dollop of Chardonnay has been added for mid-palate structure and weight. It works a treat. Great intensity on the finish. Consistently one of the best.
Decanter Magazine U.K. - 2004
