February 16, 2023 - Love Catena's wine
September 30, 2021 - Very similar review to last time but did drink well with homemade chicken and broccoli bake. Not a world beater but a decent wine
August 25, 2021 - 92-93pts. Oily, a bit oaky, made with what seems to be very mature grapes (surmaturité?), but somehow Alejandro Vigil and his team at Catena Zapata managed to extract freshness and some balance from this fruit. It possesses very nice complexity for its price point, with notes of peaches, caramel, apricot, and toffle. It has very little minerality, but good acidity and length, and fills one's mouth. I wouldn't like to drink this everyday, but with food it was really nice - clearly better IMHO than the El Enemigo Chardonnay Alejandro bottles at Bodega Aleanna.
August 6, 2021 - 3.8 Nose peach, mango, tropical, pineapple, apple, nice butter notes. Dry, high acid, medium %, medium body. Prominent flavors of pineapple, apple, mango and bitter. Lime. Decent amount of malo, not much if any lee influence. Medium finish. Beautiful chard, well balanced. Very good
April 15, 2021 - Delicious rich full bodied Chardonnay. Obviously ripe fruit but with enough acid to make it very drinkable.
April 6, 2021 - Distinctly fully mature so drink up!
Notwithstanding the slight heavy buttery edge and the decidedly dark hint to the golden burnish/colour, there was still much to enjoy with this, but you have to like mature Chardonnay to appreciate it and I accept many may not do so. Food is a necessity for this, in our case a chicken and ham pie. Overall, in the context of mature new world Chardonnay, not bad but I have had much better.
June 20, 2020 - Fantastic QPR. Lovely balanced but rich chardonnay. Probably at peak
December 19, 2019 - Drink up if you have any left: they are starting to go. I expected they would last well into next year.
November 29, 2019 - A well-rounded chardonnay with a clean, crisp and smooth finish. Surprised with the amount of minerality that comes through. For $30, this is hard to beat. May not be good for the long haul due to an absence of acidity but this will be a great wine to crack open next summer.
June 7, 2019 - plenty of tropical fruit to the fore, yogurt, vanilla and butter. A hint of acidity left, not much. A little too sweet for my taste, admittedly I should have opened it earlier ..