Winemaker Notes
Blend: 100% Chardonnay
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
Pouring a ripe yellow hue, the 2021 Chardonnay Willamette Valley is ripe and floral, with lifted notes of jasmine, honeyed lemon, golden pineapple, and a delicate touch of flinty reduction. Full-bodied without weight, it has a rounded and lightly creamy mid-palate, a ripe, pithy texture, and a long finish.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2021 Chardonnay Willamette Valley opens with creamy lemon and seashell aromas complemented by touches of flint, jasmine, lime peel and beeswax. The light-bodied palate balances a satiny texture with mouthwatering acidity. It has layered flavors and a long, perfumed finish.
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Wine Spectator
Pretty and precise, with graceful accents of apple and lemon verbena opening to floral apricot and spice flavors that linger on the sleek finish. Drink now. 917 cases made.
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.