Malivoire Estate Chardonnay 2023
Price: $21.95 ($23.95 after April 27) or $21.00 plus deposit, taxes, etc.
Channel: LCBO Vintages or direct from Malivoire
Producer: Malivoire Wine Co.
Country: Canada
Region: Niagara
Appellation: Beamsville Bench VQA
Grapes: Chardonnay (62%), Chardonnay Musqué (38%)
Alcohol by Volume: 13%
Sugar Content: 3 grams per litre
I nearly didn’t recommend Malivoire’s latest Estate Chardonnay because I thought I had just written it up. I looked it up and sure enough I did write about the Estate Chardonnay… it was in this post almost exactly a year ago when it was the 2022 vintage. I wrote then:
I don’t know how Shiraz [Mottiar], Elisa Mazzei and the rest of the Malivoire crew do it, but for $22 this is a magnificent bottle of Niagara Bench Chardonnay: crisp and mineral but still sunny and weighted with round fruit. It’s a Friday night wine at a Tuesday night price.
This still tracks, partly because the note’s pretty vague (sorry). The 2023 very much has that delicious tension between mineral and acid twang and full mouth texture. I imagine eating slices of apple and pear on which has been squeezed a pritz of lemon. And then, right at the finish there’s a touch of the Musqué florality. It tastes like summer in Canada. Pair it with snacks before dinner or a BLT at lunch.
https://www.lcbo.com/en/malivoire-estate-grown-chardonnay-573147 or https://malivoire.com/products/2023-estate-grown-chardonnay
This wine recommendation was originally published at the MJ Wine Box Substack at https://malcolmjolley.substack.com/p/sprung-forth.