Field Of Fire Chardonnay, Pyramid Valley Vineyards 2020

The 2020 Field Of Fire Chardonnay is flinty and spiced, layered with curry leaf, tobacco, brine, preserved citrus rind and hints of crushed nuts. In the mouth, the wine is rich and undulating and saturating. The fruit is wrapped around a core of scintillating acidity—it really penetrates the palate and touches the soul. It plays a defibrillation role within the fruit. We all have different preferences in wine, but I am absolutely turned on by the fruit and acid interplay here. Thrilling. Detailed. Rich.

Bunch weights can be almost double the Lion's Tooth bunches. I asked Steve Smith, MW, “How big is big?” A laugh, in response, then he says, "Well, we get clone 95 bunches coming in sometimes at 120 grams (maximum) and Mendoza between 50- and 80-gram bunches.” Winemaker Huw Kimsch explains, “The bunches are about 30% or more smaller in the Lion's Tooth Vineyard.”

The wine spent 22 months in barrel and four months in tank prior to bottling. Due to wild ferments, it struggled to get through full malolactic fermentation. This is a wonderful thing, I feel. It's an exciting drink. The pH is around three, total acidity is around eight. 14% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.

Limey citrus on the nose. Pithy grapefruit. Seems less flinty than the Springs Vineyard Chardonnay and more linear. Some green fruits. High acid and more grapefruit on the palate, piercing freshness and leaner than I expected. Really, really tightly wound. Pure, savoury, salty and long but with lovely crisp citrus fruit. Very lightly toasty, very lightly flinty, but not extreme. Creamy. Breadth comes from the toasty character not from fruit ripeness. Pure racy lemon-juice acidity. Outstanding purity.

Steve explained that the Pyramid Valley site is cooler than Burgundy proper and somewhere between Burgundy and Champagne in degree days. This wine comes from the limestone/clay soils that Mike Weersing treasured. It is immediately much more bitter and challenging and we have moved to a more dramatic plane of wine experience. Lean, sour and more concentrated, there is laser-like focus here, and this superbly lean, cheetah-like wine took a remarkable two years to complete its fermentation. In the end, it didn’t quite finish malolactic – it kept ticking away! Steve noted that they played every genre of music to it to keep it occupied. The result is a wine with what I term historic Corton-Charlemagne brutality. It seems to come from an era long ago before new oak, and overripe Chardonnay was ever invented. The vineyard is only a single acre, and a couple of hundred cases were made. Still, I would do anything to own some bottles because this is a stellar example of cool climate Chardonnay at its apogee.

Pale lemon in colour with a focused, citrus-led aromatic profile that opens up beautifully with air to show lemon oil, struck flint and orange curd. The palate is lithe with a streak of fresh acidity cutting through ripe citrus and white stone fruit. There is an oiliness to the texture and underlying ripeness that bolsters the clean cut fruit and gravelly tension. Very long with a lick of wood smoke on the finish, this is very accomplished Chardonnay from Pyramid Valley.