Winemaker Notes
All of the fruit is estate grown. All of it is certified organic.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Pretty sliced-apple and lemon-peel character to this with a medium body, fresh acidity and a long and flavorful finish. Complex and flavorful. From biodynamic grapes.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2013 Chardonnay Cascadia comes from a Pommard clone block and sees 30% new oak. It has a muted bouquet at first, but it opens with aeration to offer scents of white flower and beeswax. The palate is clean and fresh on the entry with lemon rind, a touch of pineapple and guava, the acidity very well judged and the oak beautifully integrated. There is a wonderful crescendo to this Chardonnay, a quite delicious and complex offering from winemaker Doug Tunnell.
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Wine Enthusiast
Here is a reserve-level wine that is a showcase for elegance rather than sheer power. Refined flavors of peach, pear and melon carry notes of cilantro and a finishing lick of Butter Brickle. Give this a little extra breathing time, or cellar till 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.
Ribbon Ridge is a regular span of uplifted, marine, sedimentary soils (called Willakenzie), whose highest ridge elevations twist like a ribbon. An early settler from Missouri named Colby Carter noticed this unique topography and gave the region its name in 1865—though it wasn’t declared its own AVA until 140 years later, in 2005. The AVA is enclosed by mountains on all sides between Yamhill-Carlton and the Chehalem Mountains, and is actually part of the larger Chehalem Mountains AVA. Its soils have a finer texture than its neighbors with parent materials composed of sandstone, siltstone, and mudstone. Given its presence of natural aquifers in this five square mile area, most vineyards are actually easily dry farmed!