Winemaker Notes
Las Pizarras Chardonnay 2022 has a clean, bright straw-yellow color, with silver highlights. Its elegant nose opens with citrus notes, followed by some marzipan and white flowers. The citrus profile predominates on the palate, together with notes of pastries, dried fruits and orange blossom. It has sharp and tense palate, along with length, texture and concentration.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Astonishing purity and youthful freshness, the white-peach, Asian-pear and candied Amalfi-lemon aromas incredibly vivid. Super-focused, medium-bodied palate with staggering vitality and energy. This is very concentrated, but the refreshing acidity makes it feel so light on its feet. Then comes the diamond-bright minerality at the finish. Surely the best white wine from this producer to date! Made from vines planted in 2005. Drink or hold.
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Vinous
The 2022 Chardonnay Las Pizarra was cultivated on slate soils overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Aged for 12 months in French oak barrels, 20% new, this yellow-green wine delivers enticing aromas of green apple, ginger and cedar, complemented by afcacia, nard and lime notes. Lean, refreshing and taut, its elevated acidity and vibrant mouthfeel create a uniquely nervy yet creamy texture. This is a stunning coastal Chardonnay with a nod to Burgundy. Coastal terroirs, when planted with high-quality grape material, offer a renewed expression of Chile's potential for high-end whites -- this wine is a remarkable example.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2022 Las Pizarras Chardonnay is enticingly pure and vibrant on the nose, exuding a pleasing combination of bright, floral and crushed stone aromas with incredible clarity. The palate is a livewire of energy, with a radiant, beaming presence and outstanding, chiseled precision. It concludes on a long, layered and stoney finish accented with bright citrus notes and impressive length. This grew ever more nuanced and multidimensional in the glass, gaining substantial textural breadth but never losing sight of its crystalline purity and focused core. This was 100% barrel fermented, underwent partial malolactic fermentation and aged 12 months in 20% new French barrique.
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Decanter
Poured from magnum, this Chardonnay is showing so well, showcasing its own identity as well as sense of place. Iodine salinity gives it depth, persistence and loads of character. The mid-palate, full of yellow apple, ripe pear and preserved lemon, is weighty and creamy, with a nutty edge adding it a meaty fleshiness. But the salinity is the start here, coming back on the finish with energy and seductiveness, lingering on the long tail of kelp and nori.
One of the most popular and versatile white wine grapes, Chardonnay offers a wide range of flavors and styles depending on where it is grown and how it is made. While it tends to flourish in most environments, Chardonnay from its Burgundian homeland produces some of the most remarkable and longest lived examples. California produces both oaky, buttery styles and leaner, European-inspired wines. Somm Secret—The Burgundian subregion of Chablis, while typically using older oak barrels, produces a bright style similar to the unoaked style. Anyone who doesn't like oaky Chardonnay would likely enjoy Chablis.
The Aconcagua River runs east from the charming costal town of Valparaiso and bisects the land creating the valley after which it was named. While alluvial soils predominate the Aconcagua Valey along its river throughout, its east-west flow creates drastically different conditions on each of its ends. Its western, seaside vineyards, with clay and stony soils upon gently rolling hills, produce cool-climate varieties such as Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Its inner region is one of Chile’s hottest and produces some of its best red wines. Panquehue in the inner Aconcagua is the site of Chile’s first Syrah vines, planted in 1993.