Pentley Estate, Genevieve Chardonnay

In 1988 Kym, Ang and Bec Tolley joined forces to buy a block of land in Coonawarra and Penley Estate was underway, the amalgamation of a 5th generation wine family Penfold and Tolley. To create their contemporary Coonawarra wines, they’ve returned to traditional methods of viticulture. They’ve taken a more natural, holistic approach to vine, incorporating a range of techniques and processes. For a start, they are returning to hand pruning. While they still use machinery in some of their vineyards, the precision of hand pruning makes a difference to the consistency of the yield and the fruit. They also have new irrigation and frost protection programmes in place as well as soil cultivation and moisture retention initiatives.