2021 Chacra Chardonnay by J-M Roulot & P. Incisa

This has a complex yet refined nose of sliced apples, peach pits, smoked almonds, wet stones, chalk and white pepper. Hints of beeswax, juniper and cedar, too. It’s medium-bodied, elegant and light-footed, yet powerful, too. Creamy layers of stones and stone fruit slowly evolve to blanched almonds and nougat. Very long and precise. Try this from 2024. From biodynamically grown grapes.

I missed the Chacra wines the last time I covered Argentina during the pandemic, so from the 2018s, we jump to the 2021s whites, the top of which is the 2021 Chacra Chardonnay, produced by Jean-Marc Roulot with the help of the Chacra team. It comes from the proper Chacra Vineyard, from 40-year-old vines on mineral soils with alluvial stones covered with calcium carbonate. It fermented with indigenous yeasts, 10% in clay amphorae, 15% in concrete eggs and 75% in French oak barrels, and 75% of the wine matured in barrel for nine months, while 25% of the volume was kept in concrete for that time. It has 13% alcohol and a pH of 3.3. There is a big jump in subtleness, precision and elegance from the other Chardonnay; this comes from better vines, with better soil, more limestone, and it shows the energy, the chalkiness and the sapid sensation, almost saline in the finish. It's high pitched, pure, elegant and subtle, with a velvety mouthfeel but vibrant and full of energy, floral, perfumed, nuanced and with great purity and precision, like a laser cut with the Roulot laser...