Cline Estate Chardonnay 2017
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James
Suckling
Product Details
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Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
This is a brilliant wine with plentiful tropical and stone fruit flavors balanced with oak and vanilla complexity that leads to a long and luscious finish.
This Chardonnay was grown on our Estate Catapult and Diamond Pile vineyards located in the Sonoma Coasta AVA. These vineyard locations experience the cooling effect of the Pacific fog most days during the growing season and are prized for their Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grapes. The vineyards are also in the region called “The Petaluma Gap” which is defined as a corridor of cool air that comes from the Pacific Ocean and flows toward the east through the gap in the Sonoma mountain range. It cools the area which is ideal for slowly ripening Chardonnay and maintaining acidity.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Dark, golden color and a very bold, buttery and complex style. The palate has a toasty thread through ripe and fleshy, peach and melon flavors.
Other Vintages
2020-
The Somm
Journal
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Tasting
Panel
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.