ICONS - Giaconda Chardonnay

Written by Ian Robertson on 21st June 2008

Wine Without Wank presents Icons – the wines that represent the best of breed. Wines that are hailed by the wine world for quality, consistency and flavour. Wines that have a proven track record over the years. Wines that are ICONS.

Some of these wines may prove to be expensive…perfect for celebrations and special occasions!!

Some wines live in your memory like crazy. No matter what, you still remember the moment you cracked it, drew out the cork, breathed in the wafting perfume, and then took that first intense mouth filling sip.

My first Giaconda Chardonnay was just such a wine.

It all started when a mechanical engineer got interested in wine in the early 1970’s. That guy’s name was Rick Kinzbrunner. So enamoured, he spent ten years traveling the world in an attempt to learn more. After time in New Zealand, he studied at Davis University in California, a famed wine institute, and did stints with some of the most famous Californian wineries such as Stag’s Leap, Simi and Matanzas Creek. Finally, Europe beckoned and he worked with the Moueix group, owners of the famed Chateau Petrus. Finally, in 1980, Australia called him home to a job at Brown Brothers. On the side however, he planted grapes near the town of Beechworth.

The side project soon became the main project in his life. Rick has always had high hopes for the area in which he planted his grapes. At 400 metres it was already fairly cool, but the slopes were also south facing meaning that many vines did not get a lot of the direct rays from the sun. With a soil profile of granitic loam over decomposed gravel and clay, the elements were all there for cool climate wine making.

Although the Pinot Noir and the Bordeaux blend attract a healthy amount of supporters, and in fact could very well find their way onto this list of classic wines, the instant standout was most certainly the Chardonnay. Vintage 1986 marked its first release, and almost instantly it garnered a wealth of support in the wine press in Australia and overseas.

But back to that first taste experience of mine. It was a 2001 – supposedly not a great vintage for the wine by the way. There were five other tasters. The wine was the first opened – partly because I was eager to get to it with a fresh palate, and partly because compared to the other wines we were tasting it was not so high in alcohol at 13.5%. This was probably a tactical error – we had some other white wines to follow, and no one could even think about these with such an intense beauty still hanging around on their palates and minds.

When the wine was opened, it completely overwhelmed all other smells in the room. There were people outside the room who smelt this wine from over 40 feet away and through two doors! The style was not quite what you could call French, but it is not what you would call classically Australian either. It was both full and round in the mouth while retaining an elegant lightness. There is a lot going on in the wine – nuts of all sorts, butter, melons and grapefruit. It all comes together in an intense explosion of flavour. And suffice to say, the length was extraordinary – I could still taste this wine after a further four or five other wines.

Remember – this was a supposedly poor vintage! My brain was on overdrive – what would a renowned vintage taste like?

Suffice to say, I was hooked. And it certainly settled in my mind that Giaconda Chardonnay had a deserved place amongst the elite of the Australian wine industry.

Giaconda web site.

Wine Without Wank reviews Giaconda Chardonnay.