Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2013 Chardonnay Dierberg Vineyard is a smoking white from the Santa Maria Valley that was brought up in 15% new 400-liter French oak barrels. Full, bodied, rich and beautifully textured, with lots of buttered apple, melon, spice and creamy notes, it stays crisp and clean on the finish.
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Wine Enthusiast
Bright and airy on the nose, with aromas of lemon pith, ripe apple and delicate white peach, this wine is one of the first made in its entirety by Dierberg's new winemaker, Tyler Thomas. The palate offers flavors of fresh lime sprayed on cold apple slices and sprinkled with sea salt, proving tightly wound with the right amount of grip and energy.
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.