The 2018 Langhe Chardonnay Prasué is a lean bodied white wine with good fiber and textural richness, just enough to pair with shellfish or white meat. The bouquet is carefully intense with stone fruit, peach and some tropical pineapple. This vintage is open and accessible from the start. There is some distant minerality at the back. This wine should evolve nicely over the next few years.

The 2017 Langhe Chardonnay Prasué is large in scope and almost full-bodied, but not quite. You get plenty of generous fruit here with fresh apricot and peach followed by honey-glazed almond. This hot vintage has created a bigger wine all around in terms of concentration, texture and flavor intensity. However, the acidity is also nicely played.

Among Paolo Saracco's new releases, I am less enamored with the 2015 Langhe Chardonnay Prasué. The bouquet shows some distant matchstick or brimstone that should subdue with time. The wine is luminous and light in appearance with preserved lemon, toasted almond and exotic fruit at its core.

This is a slightly awkward, thorny Chardonnay from Piedmont in Northern Italy that exhibits a very pale color and pungent aromas of toasted nut and peach. It is constructed as an easy, no-fuss wine but ultimately it lacks harmony.——M.L.(12/31/2009)—— 83