JAQK Cellars Pearl Handle Sonoma Coast Chardonnay 2007
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This Chardonnay has aromas of pear, apricots, melon, honeysuckle, and toasty oak.
The taste is a smooth, viscous, and balanced, with good acidity, a long finish, and a full-tilt style without being heavy or cloying.
When you follow your passion, you pour yourself into it wholeheartedly. Work ceases being work. It becomes something you enjoy, something that feels more like, well, play.
For Craig, there’s nothing he’d rather be doing than walking through vineyards, crumbling clumps of soil in his hands, smelling the air, understanding a particular harvest, and coaxing from it a nectar that’s wonderfully delicious. Katie and Joel share with Craig a passion for wine, but their first love is the world of graphic design. They were drawn to it at an early age and have immersed themselves in it ever since. At their firm, Hatch Design, they craft brand identities, packaging, and communications that not only further their clients’ goals, but make the world a little more beautiful a place for all of us.
And so JAQK Cellars was born. Not so much a business as a blank canvas. Not so much an enterprise for three colleagues as a way for three creative souls to indulge their passions. A way for them to slave away doing what they love till their hearts’ content.
One of the most popular and versatile white wine grapes, Chardonnay offers a wide range of flavors and styles depending on where it is grown and how it is made. While it tends to flourish in most environments, Chardonnay from its Burgundian homeland produces some of the most remarkable and longest lived examples. California produces both oaky, buttery styles and leaner, European-inspired wines. Somm Secret—The Burgundian subregion of Chablis, while typically using older oak barrels, produces a bright style similar to the unoaked style. Anyone who doesn't like oaky Chardonnay would likely enjoy Chablis.
A vast appellation covering Sonoma County’s Pacific coastline, the Sonoma Coast AVA runs all the way from the Mendocino County border, south to the San Pablo Bay. The region can actually be divided into two sections—the actual coastal vineyards, marked by marine soils, cool temperatures and saline ocean breezes—and the warmer, drier vineyards further inland, which are still heavily influenced by the Pacific but not quite with same intensity.
Contained within the appellation are the much smaller Fort Ross-Seaview and Petaluma Gap AVAs.
The Sonoma Coast is highly regarded for elegant Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and, increasingly, cool-climate Syrah. The wines have high acidity, moderate alcohol, firm tannin, and balanced ripeness.