We absolutely adore the varietal Torrontes as grown in South America, and when we found a winery producing it in Bolivia of all places, Bodega Uvairenda, we knew we had to pick up a bottle.
The 1750 Torrontes here is grown at a relatively high altitude (above 5,000 feet) and is blended with about 15% of other grapes including Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, and Pedro Gimenez. Together, this wine ends up being a bit more mellow than what you'd typically expect for this otherwise potent varietal.
Every so often we have a wine that we fall in love with at first sip. The South African-based Ataraxia (in Hemel-in-Aarde) offers a Chardonnay that, for us at least, won us over right away.
If an intensely acidic and fruity Chardonnay is what you see, Ataraxia's entry will certainly deliver.
We're diving into the world of Chardonnay thanks to a modest collection in our cellar, and recently cracked open a bottle of Chamisal Vineyard's Stainless Steel Chardonnay 2018.
While we wish this one would've had a bit more going on when sipping, we have to admit it went down fast all the same.
We recently celebrated our eighth wedding anniversary, and so naturally we were looking for a wine to pair with a special dinner. Our menu included a cheese and charcuterie board, crab cakes, and black cod so we were looking for a dry white wine.
We chose a 2016 Heritiers du Comte Lafon Macon-Milly Lamartine Clos du Four, a Chardonnay from the Maconnais region of Burgundy (arguably the region's most popular grape, and our first Chardonnay from Burgundy). While we didn't end up being terribly big fans of this wine, it did pair nicely with our seafood dinner.
MacRostie Winery is one of those places that is near and dear to our hearts as we had a chance to personally visit the estate when traveling around Sonoma in early 2019. We were one of the first appointments for the day and got a prime outdoor seat on their patio (complete with complimentary blankets as it was quite cold) and enjoyed our wine with some of the finest views we had on that trip.
We picked up some bottles to take home, one of which was the MacRostie Dutton Ranch Chardonnay 2016. We held off on drinking this one for about a year and cracked into it in mid-2020- just under four years from the point of harvest.
