Winemaker Notes
Pale yellow in color, this Chardonnay offers fresh citrus and tropical fruit aromas, with white flowers and mineral hints. The texture is soft and balanced, with precise acidity, while also exhibiting a persistent, complex and fresh finish. It is a classic Chardonnay that expresses its origin in a coastal climate.
This Chardonnay is ideally served with seafood, white meat such as chicken, Asian food, paella and pastas. Ideally serve chilled (at around 54° F).
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Creamy nose, delivering butter drops, pineapple and fresh apricots. On the palate there’s a mineral tone, a natural expression of acidity and some leesy, chalky character. About 10% went through malolactic fermentation.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
2018 was a cooler vintage, similar to 2013, and the 2018 Corralillo Chardonnay shows the good freshness of the year coupled with good ripeness and volume from the slow ripening and the work with the lees. Most of the wine (70%) fermented in oak barrels and the rest in stainless steel, where the wines matured for some 10 months with the lees. This is a serious and restrained Chardonnay that is varietal, vibrant and very tasty, with deep flavors. Here they apply some of the techniques of the Sauvignon Blanc to keep the freshness of the wine. All of these wines really deliver for their price.
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.
Its rolling, coastal hills encouraged great investment in the 1990s from those in search of a cooler grape growing environment compared to those found in Chile’s Central Valley. All of the vineyards of the San Antonio Valley, which runs north to south and parallel to the coast, experience the cooling effect of the ocean and are made of vine-loving clay and granitic soils. While Sauvignon Blanc put this valley on the Chilean wine map, high quality Pinot Noir and Chardonnay are emerging and some producers are starting to experiment with sparkling wine.