Winemaker Notes
Vegan
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
All clone 4 from a site just beside Bien Nacido, the 2018 Chardonnay Katherine’s has an Alsatian slant in its green citrus, tangerine, white flower, and honeysuckle aromas and flavors. With beautiful purity, plenty of minerality, medium to full body, and a crisp, layered style, this gorgeous Chardonnay does everything right. Enjoy it any time over the coming 7-8 years.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Chardonnay Katherine's comes from clone four, self-rooted vines that are 49 years old. It has a wonderfully open, perfumed nose of ripe quince, peaches and apricot, sweet hay, dried chamomile, orange blossom, spring honey and toasted almonds plus hints of crushed shell, lime peel and saline. The light to medium-bodied palate offers intense, seriously minerally flavor layers with great supporting texture and juicy acidity, finishing long, layered and energetic. Around 500 cases were made.
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Wine Enthusiast
Extremely jubilant aromas of Fruit Stripe gum, guava, pineapple and mango make for a fresh and lively nose on this bottling. The palate zips with acidity that cuts through the ripe peach, pear and pineapple-guava flavors, which are powerful yet framed in a tense texture.
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.