Baileyana Firepeak Chardonnay 2018
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The Baileyana Firepeak Chardonnay is bright and complex, smooth and balanced with refined acid structure and a nice creamy finish. This wine is created from a noteworthy Edna Valley vineyard affectionately named "Firepeak" after the chain of extinct volcanoes that once ruled the area where grapes now grow. The volcanic remnants in the soil combine with clay loam and rocky marine sediment to create an ideal environment for making remarkable Chardonnay.
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Wine Enthusiast
Dried lemon peel and sandalwood lead into earthier tones of damp forest logs and struck match on the nose of this bottling. There's a tight, linear texture to the palate, where ashy and chalky flavors meet with light oak and seared pineapple.
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Decanter
Sappy, fresh and lemony with a hint of melon, and pretty aromas touched with Digestive biscuit sweetness and warmth.
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Over 35 years ago, Catharine Niven envisioned a small vineyard in front of her Edna Valley home that would deliver high quality wines.
To achieve her goal, she bucked popular California viticultural trends and looked to the old world for her inspiration. She was one of the first women to own a winery and one who wasn’t afraid to do things differently. Baileyana, named for the place where she met her husband Jack, soon outgrew her small home vineyard. It has since been sourced from their estate Paragon Vineyard, Jack’s pioneering plantings going back to 1973. Baileyana offers beautiful, cool-climate Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, which are refined, rich, and perfectly balanced. She wasn’t entirely surprised by Baileyana’s early success, but Catharine didn’t dream that her small project would become the family legacy that it is today.
Now in the expert hands of the next two generations, the wines remain true to her pioneering spirit, as well as to the genuine, elegant style she exuded when walking into any room.
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.
California’s coolest wine growing area, Edna Valley excels in the production of high quality Central Coast wines like Pinot noir, Chardonnay, Rhône Blends and aromatic white wines. It has a cool Mediterranean climate and an incredibly long growing season, giving late-ripening varieties plenty of opportunity to develop great phenolic complexity.
Its northwest to southeast orientation creates a direct path for cool Pacific air and fog to penetrate the valley from the Los Osos and Morro Bay area inwards. Low hillsides of both calcareous and volcanic soils are home to much of the vineyard acreage of the Edna Valley.