Winemaker Notes
Produced from a single vineyard in the Eola-Amity Hills atop bright red jory volcanic soil. Elegant, lacy fine texture with a profound yet lifted finish.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Subtle and transparent, showing dried green apples, yogurt, lemon and lime rind and oyster-shell character on both the nose and palate. Full-bodied yet tight and intense with phenolics that flow through the wine. Lightly chewy but polished and caressing in the finish. A fantastic chardonnay with lots of flavor and texture.
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Vinous
The 2023 Chardonnay Richard Hermann Cuvée is more nuanced than expected, with an almost haunting sensuality to its bouquet of flint, lemon oil, vanilla bean and freshly sliced nectarines. It is incredibly ethereal, showing a silken character yet nearly weightless at first. Tantalizing acidity enlivens its sweet inner herbal tones while a hint of almond paste adds richness and ripe orchard fruits settle on the senses. The 2023 tapers off with outstanding length, revealing mineral depth as a tart green apple twang adds a perfect punctuation to the experience.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2023 Chardonnay Richard Hermann Cuvée has arresting aromas of quince paste, graham cracker, panna cotta, honey and spice. The medium-bodied palate is luxuriously silky, and its flavors are highly concentrated. It’s balanced by taut, structuring acidity and has a long, dynamic 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.
Running north to south, adjacent to the Willamette River, the Eola-Amity Hills AVA has shallow and well-drained soils created from ancient lava flows (called Jory), marine sediments, rocks and alluvial deposits. These soils force vine roots to dig deep, producing small grapes with great concentration.
Like in the McMinnville sub-AVA, cold Pacific air streams in via the Van Duzer Corridor and assists the maintenance of higher acidity in its grapes. This great concentration, combined with marked acidity, give the Eola-Amity Hills wines—namely Pinot noir—their distinct character. While the region covers 40,000 acres, no more than 1,400 acres are covered in vine.