Pare "Bowyer Ridge Vineyard" Chardonnay 2022 - Adelaide Hills, Australia

95/100 Mike Bennie, Halliday Wine Companion
91/100 Huon Hooke, The Real Review

Mike Bennie, Halliday Wine Companion "From a single vineyard and two plots on the site, both over 500m above sea level. New and used French oak is used to mature the wine. It feels right in the groove. Supple, succulent, packed with flavour yet light on its feet. Just-ripe stone fruits with hazy green apple juice, a touch of nougat, some sweet spice, a core of briny minerality and a lick of honeycomb, barely there but lending some nuance about the wine's age at tasting. Complex, layered and even; beautiful of poise and character."

Huon Hooke, The Real Review "Medium straw-yellow hue; complex buttery bouquet—buttered croissant with honey, the palate following on from this with soft, round, sweet-fruit in the core. A worked style with plenty of artifact characters, balanced and retaining its structure well throughout the palate."

Australian Financial Review – Max Allen "Winemaker Ansel Ashby launched his first label, Gatch, in 2016 to produce wines that were “fun, delicious, and not pretentious” – everyday drinking white and red that didn’t focus on variety or provenance. His latest venture, Pare, set up with business partner Andrew Williams, takes the opposite tack: serious, single-varietal wines from single, named vineyards. There are two grenaches in the line-up, both from blocks of old, dry-grown vines in the prized Blewitt Springs area of McLaren Vale. The 2023 Douglas Gully Vineyard Grenache, from vines planted in 1948 in deep sand, is very good – squashy blood plum fruit flavours and fine, chewy tannins, like sucking on a plum stone – but my pick is the Jericho. Vines planted in 1955, wild ferment with 50 per cent whole bunches, then 10 months’ maturation in old puncheons all result in a pure, floral, polished expression of grenache with a sprinkling of spice and fine, porcelain tannins. Quite seductive."

Pare wines was born from a friendship and desire to craft the finest wines from the Adelaide Hills and McLaren Vale. Our wines are all single vineyard expressions of Chardonnay and Grenache. Each wine is hand crafted, using pared back winemaking to express the vineyards in their truest form.

The Bowyer Ridge vineyard sits just outside of Lobethal in Kenton Valley at 490 m in elevation. This cool site retains acidity and balance, leading to an elegant but powerful wine. We consider this among the best vineyards for Chardonnay in the Adelaide Hills.