Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
A reserve-level, barrel-fermented cuvée, this has a fresh and creamy mouthfeel. It blends crisp tree fruits with bracing minerality, and finishes lightly with a pat of butter.
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Wine & Spirits
You can almost taste the breeze in this fresh, bright chardonnay. Its flavors lean generously toward pear, marked by a hint of lees, finishing with firmness and a racy mineral length. It should benefit from some cellar time; then serve with trout en papillote.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2013 Chardonnay Casteel Reserve comes from Dijon selection 76 planted in 1994 and Dijon selection 95 planted in 1999. It is whole-cluster pressed, barrel fermented and underwent complete malo. It has a surprisingly taciturn bouquet with light tertiary scents, quite earthy, with dry straw scents. The palate is well balanced with well-judged acidity, a little more concentration than the Chardonnay Estate, with quite a rich, honeyed texture on the finish that does not get too carried away. Enjoy this over the next 4-6 years.
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Wine Spectator
Fresh and refined, with a delicacy to the spicy, tobacco-accented pear and floral flavors, lingering quietly and persistently. Drink now through 2018.
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.
Running north to south, adjacent to the Willamette River, the Eola-Amity Hills AVA has shallow and well-drained soils created from ancient lava flows (called Jory), marine sediments, rocks and alluvial deposits. These soils force vine roots to dig deep, producing small grapes with great concentration.
Like in the McMinnville sub-AVA, cold Pacific air streams in via the Van Duzer Corridor and assists the maintenance of higher acidity in its grapes. This great concentration, combined with marked acidity, give the Eola-Amity Hills wines—namely Pinot noir—their distinct character. While the region covers 40,000 acres, no more than 1,400 acres are covered in vine.