2024 Vino de Vinedo Los Parientes Chardonnay

I know this wine now, so I shouldn’t be surprised by it – but I am. It’s brilliantly, almost mischievously fresh, crisp, bright and vivid. It’s a fire-cracker of freshness and it has much the same effect as a fire-cracker in my head. But there’s incredible complexity here too when one relaxes after the initial shock and starts to take in what we have in the glass. Playdough (as I now remember from when I tasted the previous vintage almost a year ago), beeswax, candied fruits and a blend of exotic and citrus fruits. Another fabulous wine that is almost electrifying in its intensity and freshness, balancing viscosity and energy and radiating and pulsing all the way to a distant horizon.

The 2024 Chardonnay Vino de Viñedo Los Parientes comes from Troiquén. This aged with 10% new French ook. Pale green in hue, it opens with green apple, acacia and linden, plus a light note of refined oak. This is concentrated and refreshingly high in acidity, with delicate weight compared to previous vintages. The 2024 is an expressive Chardonnay from a cool region in a cool year. This is full of tension and flavar

Most of the 2024 crop at Pancho Baettig's Los Suizos vineyard was wiped out by a November 2023 frost, but what survived was pretty smart. Fermented in larger 8% new French oak, this is leesy, taut, sculpted and refreshing, with flavours of green apple, lemon verbena and patisserie spices and a chiselled, palate-cleansing finish untempered by malolactic fermentation.