Winemaker Notes
Possessing youthful shades of greenish lemon and straw, this Sonoma County Chardonnay envelopes the senses with notes of crisp pear, lime zest, stone fruit, and honeysuckle. Its complex palate features a textured array, with flavors of honey crisp apple, lemon cur, and a lively finish of vibrant acidity and notable mineral driven undertones.
Professional Ratings
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2021 Cattleya Alma de Cattleya Chardonnay is a beautiful, well-structured wine. TASTING NOTES: This wine shines with aromas and flavors of dried earth, leaves, savory spices, and mineral notes. Pair it with delicately breaded, pan-fried crabcakes. (Tasted: May 8, 2023, San Francisco, CA)
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2021 Chardonnay, has bright scents of golden apples, spring honey, toast, acacia and matchstick. The light-bodied palate offers youthful apple flavors, gently tangy acidity foiled by a creamy texture and a long, flinty finish.
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Wine Enthusiast
Both baked and fresh apple aromas show on the nose of this bottling, as do lemon pith and wet-earth elements. The palate is zippy and lively, with zesty citrus and richer tropical fruit flavors in alignment.
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.
Home to a diverse array of smaller AVAs with varied microclimates and soil types, Sonoma County has something for every wine lover. Physically twice as large as Napa Valley, the region only produces about half the amount of wine but boasts both tremendous quality and variety. With its laid-back atmosphere and down-to-earth attitude, the wineries of Sonoma are appreciated by wine tourists for their friendliness and approachability. The entire county intends to become a 100% sustainable winegrowing region by 2019.
Sonoma County wines are produced with carefully selected grape varieties to reflect the best attributes of their sites—Dry Creek Valley’s consistent sunshine is ideal for Zinfandel, while the warm Alexander Valley is responsible for rich, voluptuous red wines like Cabernet Sauvignon. Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are important throughout the county, most notably in the cooler AVAs of Russian River, Sonoma Coast and Carneros. Sauvignon Blanc, Merlot and Syrah have also found a firm footing here.