The 2005 Chardonnay Vie di Romans is packed with lush tropical fruit and sweet toasted oak flavors. It offers outstanding depth and concentration in a very New World style of Chardonnay. Anticipated maturity: 2008-2015. Proprietor Gianfranco Gallo's wines reflect his enormous passion for California. Stylistically they stand apart from the vast majority of wines being made in Friuli today for their level of ripeness, structure and use of oak. Gallo's vineyards are located in the Isonzo plains, an area that historically has not been particularly highly regarded for the production of high-quality wines, but that doesn't appear to have been an obstacle for the inspired Gallo. Vie di Romans' vineyards are planted to high densities and the fruit is picked as late as possible. Gallo works in a reductive manner in his impeccably clean cellar, eliminating the wines' contact with air as much as possible with the goal of making structured wines capable of extended cellaring. Most of the wines undergo malolactic fermentation in French oak although a few see only stainless steel. In the past I haven't been a huge fan of the estate's wines as I often found them heavy and over extracted, with bitter, astringent tannins. I saw none of those qualities in the 2005s which are almost universally outstanding and seem to represent a new level of finesse. That said, in general I prefer the estate's stainless steel wines, which tend to exhibit greater expression of terroir as well as varietal trueness. Importer: A Marc de Grazia Selection, various American importers, including Michael Skurnik, Syosset, NY; tel. (516) 677-9300, Vin Divino, Chicago, IL; tel. (773) 334-6700, and Estate Wines, Ltd., San Rafael, CA; tel. (415) 492-9411