Label: Bodega Chacra
Vintage: 2022
Fruit: Chardonnay
Region: Patagonia, Argentina
ABV: 13%
organic / biodynamic
smoking gun / gold lime / fries and ice cream
There's no shame in asking for help. Often it's the bravest thing one can do. It takes a village, Lean on me, and so on. So when Piero Incisa della Rochetta and Jean-Marc Roulet agreed to join forces to make the most ambitious possible Argentinean Chardonnay, the wine world collectively shouted “hiphip-hooray! Three cheers for Chardonnay! Good show, chaps! Tally-ho!” (I like to imagine.) This chard is THE smoking gun, pure rock juice with a lime garnish, if a quartz crystal could be juiced.
97 Points, Zekun Shuai, jamessuckling.com: "Such a flinty nose that delivers a full package of minerality. Quarry, chalk, gun powder and lime. The nose really speaks to you. Creamy and textured on the palate with bright but chiselled acidity and real tension. One of the best Mainque’s ever? Chacra’s answer to fine Chablis. Drink or hold. From biodynamically grown grapes." 04/23 James Suckling
Jean Marc Roulot was at dinner at Guillaume d’Angerville’s place with their friend Piero, the founder of Argentina's culty Chacra winery. Piero mentioned, while discussing his Patagonian terroir, his desire to try making a white cuvée in Argentina. Now, Roulot is one of the best Chardonnay growers on the planet, so he’d be a good guy to chat up about making white wines of terroir. But he doesn’t seem a likely candidate to jet off to Patagonia and start making Argentinian Chardonnay. But Piero had found a unique terroir in Patagonia and Roulot was intrigued. Intrigued enough to propose working with him, and when Roulot visited he found, in his words, a “magical place” where “nature is so strong.” This was an opportunity to do something new: work with a friend, “not trying to make a copy of Burgundy in Argentina—totally different. Trying to produce a good Chardonnay in Argentina.” And that’s what they’ve done. Piero’s magical terroir and Roulot’s Chardonnay touch come together to make an amazing, totally new white wine. The Chacra Mainque Chardonnay comes from three plots with sand over mineral soils with river rocks and limestone. Desert-like weather (hot days, cold nights) make ripe fruit with good acidity.
__________
Though scholarly consensus and anecdotal evidence says that you can not get blood from a stone, you CAN get wine from a desert. Italian Piero Incisa della Rochetta was divinely led to the Rio Negre Valley in northern Patagonia, Argentina, at the convergence of the Neuquen and Limay Rivers on limestone, sand and clay, and the vines (kept in “chacras” or plots separated by canals) are fed by snow melting from the Andes mountains. This is purely speculation, but it sounds like the kind of place where one would see UFOs (or UAPs as they are now called) zipping around the sky with some regularity. It's easy to see why our intergalactic (or inter-dimensional) bros want to come and check out Bodega Chacra, seeing as they use completely Biodynamic practices to create transcendent Chardonnay (with the help of chard-GOAT Jean-Marc Roulot) and sublimely focused Pinot Noir coming from vines planted as far back as 1932.
__________
Please note, all orders come with chips!
