Winemaker Notes
This cool climate Chardonnay is delicate in profile; balancing Meyer lemon and white peach fruit with honeycomb, flint, and mineral notes. The palate reveals notes of sweet apple and mellow pear, and preserved lemon. A vivid streak of acidity runs through the palate, unifying flavors and leading to a crisp, toasty, lightly oaked finish.
Professional Ratings
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Tasting Panel
Extremely inviting aromas of tangerine and butterscotch give way to lemon, wet stone, and honeyed mango enveloped in a light yet creamy texture. They're enhanced by an oaky tastiness on the finish that tastes like freshly baked croissant.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2018 Cannonball Eleven Chardonnay is firm, well-built, and lasting. TASTING NOTES: This wine brings tart apple, mineral, and oak front and center. Pair it with lobster or crab in a creamy sauce. (Tasted: May 27, 2020, San Francisco, CA)
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.
A vast appellation covering Sonoma County’s Pacific coastline, the Sonoma Coast AVA runs all the way from the Mendocino County border, south to the San Pablo Bay. The region can actually be divided into two sections—the actual coastal vineyards, marked by marine soils, cool temperatures and saline ocean breezes—and the warmer, drier vineyards further inland, which are still heavily influenced by the Pacific but not quite with same intensity.
Contained within the appellation are the much smaller Fort Ross-Seaview and Petaluma Gap AVAs.
The Sonoma Coast is highly regarded for elegant Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and, increasingly, cool-climate Syrah. The wines have high acidity, moderate alcohol, firm tannin, and balanced ripeness.