Catena Alta Chardonnay 2016

The 2016 Catena Alta Chardonnay was cropped from a cool El Niño year. It's fresh and elegant, with high acidity and moderate alcohol. The oak is almost imperceptible, as the wine is very intense and pungent. Eighty percent of the grapes come from Adrianna Vineyard in Gualtallary, and the rest come from the Domingo Vineyard in Viña Bastías, in Tupungato. It fermented in 225-liter oak barrels with wild yeasts, and only about 30% of the volume underwent malolactic fermentation. The aging lasted for 14 months and was in new, second and third use barriques. It has a dark golden color and an impressive nose with ripe yellow fruit and some notes of botrytis but with a completely dry palate. It's round, lush and exotic, with the grapes taken from deeper soils and slightly warmer parts of the Adrianna Vineyard in Gualtallary. It's quite marked by the oak, but it should evolve nicely and in a classical Burgundian way in bottle. 31,200 bottles were filled in July 2017.