Ravanal 2025 Gran Reserva Chardonnay

ABOUT THE PRODUCER

Viña Ravanal sits in Placilla, at the eastern end of the Colchagua Valley, beside the old San Fernando–Pichilemu rail line. Mario Ravanal — eldest of eight, raised by a farmer father — studied agronomy at the Universidad de Chile and went to France in 1960 for postgraduate work in enology and viticulture at Montpellier and Bordeaux.
On a visit home in 1965 he heard a property in Placilla was for sale, bought it for the vineyards already producing on it, and has spent the sixty years since among them. Some of those vines are over a hundred years old and were bearing fruit long before the family arrived.
His three children — Carmen Paz, Pía and Mario Sebastián — are all enologists and run the estate today. Every vineyard is family-owned, in Placilla and San José de Manantiales, and everything is hand-picked.
The valley floor runs stony, clay and deep alluvial, with a sharp day–night temperature swing off the Tinguiririca. Ripening is slow, yields are low, and concentration is the payoff.

ABOUT THE WINE

The Chardonnay is the outlier in a red-dominated valley: Colchagua’s name is built on Carmenère and Cabernet, and the whites here live on thermal amplitude rather than coastal cooling.
Twenty-year-old estate vines in the vineyards surrounding the winery, hand harvested in the third week of March and fermented cool, a few hundred meters from the rows.

Vintage: 2025 | Wine Type: White Wine
Varietal: 100% Chardonnay
Origin: Chile | Appellation: D.O. Valle de Colchagua
Vineyard: Estate — Placilla and San José de Manantiales, hand-harvested; loam soils, 20-year-old vines
Elaboration: Twelve hours on the skins, 21-day fermentation at 12–16°C, no malolactic; aged 12 months in 225–400-litre French and American oak, 15% new.

TASTING NOTES

Bright straw-gold. Expressive tropical fruit with toasted coconut, vanilla and toffee over yellow apple and lemon curd. Rich-bodied and polished in texture, the warm-day/cold-night swing keeping the acidity live under the ripeness, finishing long and elegant. Serve at 50–52°F.