2018 Giaconda Chardonnay

The 2018 Chardonnay is glossy, vibrant, expressive and very reductive, emanating tons of flinty gunpowder notes. Explosive, poised and punchy, the 2018 sets off fireworks on the palate. Young and powerful, this is an exciting wine.

Gunsmoke matchstick reduction, followed by flinty granite and striking salinity giving a ton of grip and intensity. Expect waves of greengage, bay leaf, bright stone fruits, grilled white peach, lemongrass, ginger and white pepper. Soft waves of white truffle at 5 years old, this is a standout white wine that is rightly considered one of the great Chardonnays of the world. Vines grown on south-facing slopes, which keeps this beautiful fleshy but cool mint leaf aspect, despite undergoing full malo during fermentation and being aged in 30% new oak (at 16C for a long, slow ferment). Organic certified. A mild vintage until early summer, then a disease-free beautiful February, giving perfect ripening.

If the 2019 is rambunctious in its outlay of scent and flavor, the 2018 Chardonnay is a sleeper. The nose is restrained, offering only hints of the campfire/eucalypt/Australian bush smell that I so love, and instead leans heavily into preserved lemon and struck match. In the mouth, the wine is like a sonic boom of flavor. It veritably explodes, decrying its restrained exterior, sending shards of flavor like shrapnel to the far reaches of the mouth and throat—salted peach, almond skin, buttered toast, fennel flower, licorice root, red apple skins and layer upon layer of silt-fine phenolics that create shape and form in the mouth like a 3D printer—and there they stay. It's an unbelievable wine, just starting to hit its straps on the back palate, with decades to go before it sleeps...