Winemaker's Notes
This is our tenth vintage of working with this vineyard in the Russian River Valley. Despite our success with this site; lately I have been interested in exploring the various aspects of this vineyard’s grape material by slightly altering some winemaking choices on a very small scale. Promising changes are then incorporated into our overall approach as we go forward. As a result, we have been bottling our Chardonnays a bit later each of the last few vintages, with this one being 18 months in barrel. This extra time allows more of the yeast lees to ‘return to the wine’, essentially dissolving into the wine over time. Rather than simply soaking out more oak flavor from the proportion of ‘new’ barrels, this extra time allows the fruit, oak and yeast lees to harmonize and for the ‘angles’ to soften somewhat. That hint of star fruit and lime zest remains on the aroma, but there are more nuances and layers to the wine at this early stage. The wine maintains great mouth-watering verve and sense of minerality as always.
Judi Scherrer –
Stephen Tanzer’s International Wine Cellar – May 2010
Greenish gold. Spicy,smoke-accented pear and honeydew aromas are complemented by pungent floral and mineral qualities. Juicy orchard fruit and melon flavors are impressively concentrated but tangy acidity provides refreshing lift and bite. With air this takes on some wild iodine and spice tones that carry strongly through a long, smoky, gently chewy finish. 92 points. Josh Raynolds