2023 Sonoma Coast Chardonnay
Price: $36.00
Qty.
At a tasting not too long ago, someone asked me which of my wines I was most proud of. After thinking it over for a moment I realized that it was my Chardonnay. Although I have been working hard my entire career to find the "ideal Pinot Noir," I felt like I had further to go to get to the point where I was truly proud of my Chardonnay. I had been working to raise my Chardonnay game for quite a while. But it took a tasting of Chablis that I attended a few years ago for the proverbial light bulb to go off. Going into the tasting I was expecting a bunch of high acid, slightly underripe wines but found instead was some of the most delicious white wines I had tasted in a long time. And they were notable for not always tasting like Chardonnay, at least not to my Californian palate. They were vibrant, fresh and had surprisingly generous fruit. Very few showed much oak character, but they were texturally complete. They were exactly what I hoped my Chardonnay would taste like. But I work with fruit grown in the Sonoma Coast, not Chablis, so I could not simply copy what was done to the wines I liked so much. Instead, I paid close attention to the various steps I took along the way, from the vineyard to the bottle. Many years ago now, I learned that waiting until the Chardonnay grapes tasted good meant waiting too long. So I stopped worrying that the juice tasted sour and green. I quit buying new barrels. I began using an old Austrian oak cask instead of 228 liter barrels for fermentation and aging. And so on. The payoff began with the 2021 vintage, and continues to this day. Was it worth it? You tell me. 92 cases made.
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