Winemaker Notes
Aromatically the wine is filled with stone fruits, citrus fruits, and an underlying scent of fresh cream. On the palate the wine is beautifully texture from the malolactic fermentation with notes of crunchy Asian pears, Meyer lemon zest, and bright, racy mineral driven acidity.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
What a pretty nose of white peaches, white lavender, hazelnuts and salted almonds. Full-bodied yet fresh, with sleek, salty layers. Excellent texture and complexity. Drink or hold.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Each of the whites from Cristom pours a bright yellow hue. The 2021 Chardonnay Eola-Amity Hills is fresh and floral with notes of quince, yellow flowers, and honeycomb. Medium-bodied, with ripe golden fruit on the palate and fresh underlying acidity to balance things out nicely, it’s drinking well now and will drink well over the next 4-6 years.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2021 Chardonnay Eola-Amity Hills is sourced from Cristom's estate vineyards, plus other vineyards across the appellation, including Eola Springs and Seven Springs. It was matured in 24% new French oak for 11 months, with an additional five months in stainless steel. It has deep aromas of quince paste, honeycomb, meringue and flint. The medium-bodied palate is silky and fresh with concentrated, savory flavors and a long, flinty finish.
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Wine Enthusiast
Ripe cantaloupe, sweet hay, coconut and butter aromas make for a nice introduction to this wine. Tangy acidity frames pear, lemon tart, mint and toasted filbert flavors. The wine feels crisp and fresh in the mouth. Some Dungeness crab cakes would make a nice dinner companion.
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.