Winemaker Notes
#16 Wine Enthusiast Top 100 Cellar Selections of 2019
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Extremely delicate and pure aromas of lemon, nectarine, gardenia and lily are soft and inviting on the nose of this bottling. The palate sizzles with acidity, offering focused but austere flavors of lemon zest and crushed gravel that surround an immensely chalky core. It will mature well through 2042.
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Jeb Dunnuck
There are only 35 barrels of the 2017 Chardonnay Bien Nacido Vineyard, which comes from the crème de la crème of vineyards in the Santa Maria Valley. Aged 15 months in 10% new French oak, it has a textbook bouquet of stone fruits, crushed rocks, toasted spice, and the salty, iodine, seaside-like marine influence that's so common from this region. Medium-bodied, balanced, tight, and juicy on the palate, it has beautiful purity of fruit and a great finish.
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Wine & Spirits
This is impressively lean and leesy when first poured, with a terse lemon-lime aroma and tight, tart flavors. It has impressive energy and a succulence that hints at the lemony sun that peeks out from the morning fog, and should get even better with bottle age.
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 lesser-known but elite AVA within the larger Santa Barbara district, the Santa Maria Valley AVA runs precisely west to east starting near the coast. The valley funnels cool, Pacific Ocean air to the vineyards more inland, allowing grapes a longer hang time to ripen evenly and achieve their full potential by harvest time. Combined with minimal rainfall, consistent warm sunshine, and well-drained soils, it is an ideal environment for grape growing.
Many of the wineries here are small and highly respected, having established a reputation in the 1970s and 80s for producing excellent Central Coast wines like Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. More recently, Syrah has also proven quite successful in the region. Many vineyards are owned by growers who sell their grapes to other wineries, so it is common to see the same vineyard name on bottlings from different wineries. Bien Nacido Vineyard is perhaps the best-known and most prestigious.