Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Flint, green apples and white rosemary on the nose, reductive to start with, opening up to wildflower honey, lemon curd and bread. Deliciously saline and creamy on the palate, with a salted-butter edge to the flinty and zesty fragrances. Full-bodied and layered. From Wente clones. Better from 2026.
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Vinous
The 2022 Chardonnay Chehalem Mountain pulls the taster down into the earth as a whiff of flowery underbrush, wet stones and crushed rocks leads to musky apricot and the slightest hint of patchouli. Vividly fruit-focused within, it cascades across the palate with ripe orchard fruits and candied citrus tones, all perfectly offset by a whiplash of zesty acidity and a stern core of salty minerals. This leaves the palate saturated in a saline concentration and lemony intensity, tapering off with extreme length and sapidity. The 2022 will require patience to come together fully, especially aromatically, but once it does—look out!
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Jeb Dunnuck
Showing off a bit more power in the range, the 2022 Chardonnay Chehalem Mountain Vineyard is a bright yellow/golden color and reveals notes of ripe peaches, flinty wet stones, corn kernels, and orange peel. Full-bodied, it has electric energy that cuts through the wine, with more concentrated richness, and it lasts for ages on the palate. It’s a more assertive wine overall and should have the structure to drink at its best for another decade or more.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2022 Chardonnay Chehalem Mountain is powerful and energetic. It pairs ripe fruit and smoky reduction on the nose, with scents of matchstick and roasted almond giving way to intense candied peach, baklava and spice. The medium-bodied palate matches concentrated, flinty flavors with shimmery acidity, and it has a long, ethereal finish.
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.
The Chehalem Mountains is a northwest-southeast span of several distinct mountains, ridges and peaks in the northern part of the Willamette Valley. Of all of Willamette Valley's smaller AVAs, it is closest to the city of Portland. Its highest summit, Bald Peak at an elevation of 1,633 feet, serves to generate cooler air for the rest of the AVA and its hillside vineyards. The region covers 70,000 acres but only 1,600 acres are planted to vines; soils of the Chehalem Mountains are a mix of basalt, ocean sediment and loess.