Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Tasting Panel
A sassy, electric Chardonnay with aromas of baked pear and gem-like minerality. A striking entry of ripe pineapple, sea-salted and juicy. Hints of toffee soften its vibrant acidity. The overall lean body makes for excellent food-pairing abilities.
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2022 Chardonnay Sonoma Coast takes on a touch deeper straw appearance but is still pale yellow and offers notes of wet stone, ripe peach, and melon rind. It’s full-bodied, with a rounded mouthfeel and good lifted freshness, more ripe peach, melon, and flowers and a good finish. This attractive white also reveals a touch of warming spice.
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James Suckling
A full and layered white with sliced cooked apple and lemon aromas and flavors. Plenty of cooked apple, lemon skin and mineral undertones. Drink or hold.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2022 Chardonnay, made with 98% estate fruit, is open and perfumed with scents of fresh quince, yellow apples, cashews, acacia and bread dough. The light-bodied palate features generous, crunchy fruit, a touch of roundness to its texture, tangy freshness and a long, ethereal finish. This is very easy to drink!
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Wine Spectator
Vibrant, fresh and focused, with Meyer lemon, fresh ginger and apple notes on a crisp frame, while hints of sea salt minerality and lemon verbena linger. Drink now. 13,851 cases made.
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.