Winemaker Notes
Meadowfoam honey and Lemon verbena aromatics are followed by beeswax and a waft of citrus flower. This is truly a nectar of sunlight across the palate, with bright, energetic freshness.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Chardonnay Willamette Valley opens with toast and pie crust nuances with lush quince paste and peach fruits, plus nuances of hazelnuts and spring honey. The medium-bodied palate is silky, expansive, rich and toasty, with intense fruits tempered by mineral streaks and lively acidity, and it finishes very long.
Rating: 95+ -
Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2018 Beaux Frères Chardonnay stays bright, delicious, and long on the palate. TASTING NOTES: This wine shines with aromas and flavors of savory spices, dried earth, and green apple. Enjoy its multifaceted presence with grilled halibut with a tangy buttery sauce. (Tasted: September 11, 2021, San Francisco, CA)
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Wine Spectator
Distinctive, and tight at first, but blooms in the glass, rich yet delicate, with lemon verbena, apricot blossom and minerally lime notes that play out on the long, supple 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.
Yamhill-Carlton, characterized by pastoral, rolling hills composed of shallow, quick-draining, ancient marine soil, is ideal for Pinot noir and other cool-climate-loving varieties. It is in the rain shadow of the Coast Range to its west, whose highest point climbs to an altitude of 3,500 feet. Yamhill-Carlton is actually surrounded by mountains on three sides: Chehalem Mountains to the north, the Dundee Hills to the east and the western Coast Range to its west, which, when it lets Pacific air through, serves to cool the region.
Vineyards grow on the ridges surrounding the two small communities of Yamhill and Carlton and cover about 1,200 acres of this 60,000 acre region, which roughly makes a horse-shoe shape on a map.