2021 Giaconda Chardonnay

Aged 18 months in oak (30% new). Spark-plug smokiness on the nose, an intense mix of matchstick and mineral. The palate counters that with cooked-apple fruit with some apricot skin too. There's a toasted, nutty aftertaste with core fruit that lingers well on the finish. Deserving of its iconic status. (RH)

Sparks fly! There is real sulphidic crackle on this nose. Intense apple fruit with a bit of green melon and lemon peel. If you look closely, it's perhaps lighter in body than their average, but there is no shortage of flavour complexity – intense, lengthy, full of sulphidic matchstick complexity. (RH)

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.