I cannot think of any commercial Chardonnay on slate, so I was really curious to taste this new 2014 Aconcagua Costa "Las Pizarras" Chardonnay, which was sourced from the cool, coastal part of the Aconcagua Valley. They selected the fruit from the vines growing on slate-rich (schist) soils in their Manzanar vineyard. The whole clusters were pressed and the juice was left to settle for some 24 hours before it was put into French oak barrels to ferment with indigenous yeasts; 20% of the barrels were new, 50% were second use and the rest quite neutral, three-year-old ones. Sixty percent of the volume went through malolactic fermentation. The wine matured in barrique for 14 months before bottling. In an ideal world, this would be the 1er Cru, the Aconcagua Costa would be the village, and one day they should identify their Grand Cru. The profile is austere and there is nothing tropical; there's not a lot of fruit and in fact, there are more aromas of nuts, spices and definitively something earthy, mineral, marine -- almost saline -- with a low pH, marked acidity and restrained alcohol. The palate is terribly tasty and very dry; it really makes you salivate in a way that made me think of a Chablis (and oysters!). Groundbreaking marine and slate Chardonnay, bravo! I'd love to see this wine in ten years. 2,410 bottles produced.
(WA 31st Dec 2015)
