Giaconda Chardonnay 2021

100 Points - Wine Advocate

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.

100 Points - Jane Anson

After a tough 2020 vintage with wildfires that meant they produced no Giaconda, this was a balanced and pristine vintage in comparison, and we are rewarded with this stunning wine. Take your time, allowing for the gunsmoke reduction to clear, followed by a slow release of flint, greengage, white peach, citrus zest and sage flavours, all juicy and mouthwatering, unwavering in its grip and lift, with salted cracker and oyster shell coming in underneath. Shows a complexity that keeps you rooted to the spot. All French oak for ageing, at around 30% new. Located in an old historic goldmining town established in the late 1800s, with decomposed granite soils on the foothills of the Victorian Alps, around 440m altitude, 1m topsoil over solid granite, producting one of the great white wines of the world. Certified organic, wild yeast fermentation.

100 Points - Andrew Caillard MW

Medium pale colour. Intense flinty, lemon glace, grapefruit, nectarine, beeswax, wetstone hint matchstick aromas. Beautifully seductive wine with gorgeous ripe nectarine, lemon glace, grapefruit flavours, expressive flinty, waxy notes, fine loose knit al dente textures, superb creamy viscosity, underlying marzipan, vanilla notes and wonderfully integrated acidity. Extraordinary wine. This is a brilliant Giaconda Chardonnay with superb density, fruit complexity, flow and mineral length. Australian Grand Cru. Absolute genius.