Chateau Montelena, Chardonnay 2009

If you are a Chardonnay fan, this is for you, if you hate Chardonnay and think it's over done and uncontrolled and just outright sloppy, grab a mate and go halves on a bottle, pour a glass and watch as your remarks are wiped clean from your face by what can only be noted as a benchmark for legends of the wine world. Coming from an estate draped in history, with an coming first in the 1976 Paris judgement.

Colour:

A pale gold hue, giving away it's youth, and this is a youthful wine mind you. Clean with medium intensity of colour.

Nose:

This is were it all kicked off. A calculated, refreshing mind boggling explosion of a dictionary of terms, restrained to the last while allowing it's expression to be known. Clean, and pronounced, never coming closing to losing its elegance. Tropical fruits rule the day, with grapefruit, lemon, peach, apricot, kiwi, melon and blossoms all adding to the wine, standing their own beside one another. Ss the wine opened a nose something vaguely similar to lavender or something medicinal added life. The herbaceous elements that had manifested began to dance between lavender and heather, offering a beautiful perfume to the nose. The most constant and powerful note on the nose which created a bed for the wine to fall upon was the chalky limestone feel which permeated every fruit of the nose.

Palate:

The nose carried through to the palate and the fruits exposed themselves once again, adding green grannysmith apples and a slight nutty flavour to the fore. the stone and chalk again playing a huge part for the structure of the wine. Dry, but with the most refreshing acidity, this wine has some bottle again to do, still fantastic. Nectarine began to emerge  dancing on the clean palate cut by the acidity. The finish was other-worldly, never ending and intense, with a mouth covering feel as lemon flushed around the palate. in a word? Wonderful.

Comments:

I could expend a dictionary on this experience, truly refreshing. Expensive but very worth getting your hands on. Deconstructing the wine was immensely hard, it offered a very big challenge it is well integrated and flawless in its style and expression, honestly pick up a bottle, tell me I'm wrong. My only complaint is I can't speed up time to try this in 5 or 6 years from now. 

Score:

(A) 95

Price:

€54.95 (The Corkscrew Wine Merchants)

Value (Out of 5):

3.5