Winemaker Notes
Apricot, golden raisin, honeycomb and apple make up the fragrance of this elegant wine. The texture is remarkable, featuring the flinty, slightly waxy, basalt-kissed makeup we’ve grown to love and expect from Chardonnay grown in the appellation. The palate is layered, beginning with lemon and dried mango and leading to notes of brioche and kiwi. A juicy strand of acidity runs throughout, giving the wine a radiant quality that lights up the glass.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This has ripe tropical fruit with hints of cashews, toffee and dried herbs. Crisp and tangy palate with a medium to full body and juicy lemon pith character in the middle. Balanced and complex with a textured and peachy aftertaste.
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Wine Enthusiast
I don't think I've tried this wine before, but I will be looking for more. It may be on the lighter side in terms of body, but it packs rich aromas of Golden Delicious apples, white peaches and butter. The flavors of oats, peaches and butter combine to give the impression of a peach crumble. Slightly elevated acidity is a bonus.
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Wine Spectator
Sleek yet richly styled, with generous flavors of pear, orange blossom and lemon that glide on a dynamic finish.
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Vinous
The 2021 Chardonnay Dundee Hills lifts up with a savory blend of yellow apples, wet stones and spring florals. This soothes with its soft textures as saline minerals and crisp orchard fruits cascade throughout. It leaves a lemony concentration and sensation of liquid rock while finishing long and staining. This is beautiful today but with the balance to mature evenly over the next five years of more.
In 1993, Archery Summit set its sights on creating wines of real purpose in the Willamette Valley. Since then, the Dundee Hills winery has helped establish the region as the cradle of cooler-climate American wine. Winemaker Kim Abrahams and her team achieve bar-raising wines through hard-won instincts—the familiarity gained from many shared vintages and from tending vineyard sites they know intimately.
As responsible stewards of the land, Archery Summit engages in minimal-impact agriculture. Sustainability is a dynamic and vital part of growing wine—a practice that ensures both the industry’s future and the overall health of the trade. They practice sustainability wherever possible, from responsible farming in the vineyard to energy-sensitive approaches in the cellar.
Many of the vineyard sites are LIVE (Low Input Viticulture & Enology) certified, meaning they adhere to an internationally-acclaimed set of sustainability standards. These guidelines are site-specific and focus on strengthening the well-being of the vineyard through minimal spraying, careful clone selection, heightened biodiversity, and more. Archery Summit is committed to ensuring that the soils and biodiversity of each site remain as healthy and vibrant as when they first began cultivating them.
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 of the first Pinot noir vineyard of the Willamette Valley, planted by David Lett of Eyrie Vineyard in 1966, today the Dundee Hills AVA remains the most densely planted AVA in the valley (and state). To its north sits the Chehalem Valley and to its south, runs the Willamette River. Within the region’s 12,500 acres, about 1,700 are planted to vine on predominantly basalt-based, volcanic, Jory soil.