2023 El Enemigo Chardonnay Mendoza Argentina 750 ml

We always know Alejandro Vigil’s El Enemigo Chardonnay will be outstanding.

First, the 100-point winemaker helms the iconic Bodega Catena Zapata as his day job. Second, a significant percentage of this wine’s fruit comes from the Adrianna Vineyard in Gualtallary, where Catena makes a pair of $125 Chardonnays.

So expectations are always high—yet the 2023 El Enemigo delivers again. James Suckling awarded it 96 points, calling it “rich, focused and delicious” with “a precise, saline character.”

Vigil stands out among an increasingly competitive Argentine wine community because of his relentless drive and fanatical attention to detail. There’s seemingly no labor he won’t undertake in pursuit of quality.

This Chardonnay is born from drama, yet emerges with elegance and grace. Grown on brutally harsh plots nearly a mile above sea level, the vines struggle through exceptionally rocky soils, fighting off winds that can top 60 miles per hour. Nothing comes easy—and the grapes that grow here produce wines with impressive character.

After pressing, Vigil ferments and ages most of the juice in large 500L casks, only a small portion of which are new. He also allows some of the barrels to develop flor—a thin layer of wild yeast—to coax out additional complexity, yet the wine remains bright and energetic. That’s a highly technical, difficult process, and a rarity among Argentine Chardonnays.

The 2023 vintage was brutal, yet triumphant, for El Enemigo—spring frosts slashed yields to their lowest levels since 1960, and a hot, dry summer pushed harvest nearly a month earlier than usual. But the Adrianna Vineyard was among the least affected, thanks to its slope, and Vigil himself noted in his harvest report that the season delivered “unprecedented balance between the malic acidity, pH and ripeness.” The heat that challenged lower-altitude sites only sharpened the minerality and tension that define fruit from this address.