40% New French oak. Sourced largely from cool-climate sites in Hemel-en Aarde and Elgin. Generous scent - cream and vanilla oak. Very Burgundian in style, well rounded, with that buttery oak element overlaying ripe melon, pineapple and a touch of honey. So classy. Now-2012

Product Code: ATA108

Awarded the top accolade of five stars in John Platter's South African Wine Guide 2010 (and only 40 odd wines from the whole country are so highly rated) with the note: "..excitingly racy & fine. Suggestions of peach, pear, nuts (all lightly grilled), with stony minerality & long-echoing flavours. Forceful but graceful; satin rather than velvet richness"

Selected as one of Tim Atkin's My Cape Champions, his favourite 25 South African wines, in the January 2010 edition of Decanter magazine: "Kevin Grant used to make the wines at Hamilton Russell until 2004 and clearly learned a few things about Chardonnay there. This creamy, elegant, beautifully focused Chardonnay from Elgin and Hemel en Aarde is a star"

"Toast, butter, caramel, charcoal, apple and some impressive stoney terroir hints. Lively acidity keeps gyroscopically accurate balance. Bold and forthright. 17/20" Richard Hemming on www.jancisrobinson.com 7th August 2009.

Ataraxia, with vineyards on the slopes of the 1200 metre high Babylon’s Toren, is the creation of Kevin Grant, formerly the hugely admired winemaker at Hamilton Russell at the foot of the valley. The winery is named after the Greek name for a tranquil state of mind, free from worry or preoccupation; and Kevin seeks to make wines of equilibrium and harmony.  At the moment he is in part reliant on bought in fruit, as he puts it, “personally sourced from extreme, radical and individual parcels scattered throughout the Cape winelands”, hence the Western Cape name on the bottles.

Although Kevin’s first vintage was only in 2005, already he has made waves around the world.  This is the second vintage of the Chardonnay to be a Platter 5 star wine, and the previous vintage went on to win the Tri-Nations Chardonnay prize against Australia and New Zealand. Matthew Jukes called Ataraxia “one of the great winemaking estates of South Africa”. Despite all this acclaim prices remain more than fair.