Shaw + Smith M3 Chardonnay 2022

Wine Pilot
95/100 punten
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.

Andrew Graham, Ozwinereview
94/100 punten
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.

Wine Front
94/100
I had two bottles of this over the XMAS break while in Adelaide. It seems to be on so many wine lists, along with the ubiquitous S+S Sauvignon Blanc. A little struck match, grapefruit, lime and rind, almond richness. Fine bones, flecks of green and citrus tang, flinty feel, a coolness here, but balanced by some gloss on its pretty long finish, which is lightly chalky, with lime and almond paste to close. Tasty wine. Still quite tight and kind of bony in a way, and while it drinks nicely enough now, it’ll be better with another year or two under its belt. I thought 94 points for the first bottle I tasted, and 93+ for the second. Either way.

James Suckling
93/100 punten
A sleek, mid-weighted & very 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. One of the better recent iterations of this rightly popular cuvee.

Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
92/100 punten
The 2022 M3 Chardonnay is nutty and spiced on the nose, with green apple, crushed cashews, citrus rind and brine. The wine is, true to form, polished, sleek and flavorsome. This is a bit of a cherished wine in Australia; it is reliable and classy, and this vintage is no exception. 13% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.