Having tasted five bottles of this remarkable wine over the past year (most of them mine), I can confirm that it is evolving and changing with time in the bottle, but each time I taste it, I am amazed by its ability to highlight parts of the wine I may not have focused on the last time I tasted it. Twice this week, the 2021 Estate Vineyard Chardonnay has spoken first of its reduction and flint: it is bony and austere and taut, and I mean this in the best of ways. It speaks of its architecture currently, over its fruit. Yet it is propelled by the fruit. Giaconda manages focus and precision alongside its famous reduction, and this is what separates it from other producers in the country. It may be easy to can the reduction if it's not your preferred quality in Chardonnay, but the fruit and phenolic focus of the wine is untouchable. This is inimitable. I'm running out of bottles to taste, but I've loved every single one so far. The Giaconda Chardonnay is as revered within Australia as it is without. The style feels to me to be 50% by hand and 50% by vine (the only winery in Australia to beguile me so with this construction), although when you consider the philosophies within the winery, this can hardly be right. Wild yeasts for fermentation and malolactic fermentation, maturation in French oak, minimal sulfur addition and bottled unfiltered. The winery and cellar are set up for gravity flow. The fruit is grown in "gravel, clay soil in the foothill of the Victorian Alps," handpicked, crushed, then basket pressed (a process less commonly undertaken in Australia, although common in Burgundy) prior to being transferred to oak (30% new) for maturation. The wine is distinct and of the vineyard. I always get a bush-smoke/camphor/eucalypt/struck-match character to these wines—more or less pronounced depending on the vintage—and when tasted blind in an Australian tasting, these characteristics ALWAYS point to Giaconda. When tasted in an international context, I am usually taken to Grand Cru Puligny, which leaves me chuckling afterwards. These wines are not easy to procure, but they are cheap by international standards. A national treasure to be sure. Published: Jul 04, 2024 Drink 2024 - 2038.
Source: Robert Parker.