Winemaker Notes
The 2017 Seven Springs Chardonnay shows the classic proportions of a balanced vintage. The aromatics straddle the line between richness and brightness and the palate begins with a generous texture and closes with a vibrant, delineated finish.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2017 Chardonnay Seven Springs Vineyard has an open nose of poached pear, pie crust, baked golden apple, wet stone and crushed hazelnut with touches of Meyer lemon peel and Greek yogurt. The palate is medium-bodied and silky, fleshing out from a mineral entry into savory, honeyed layers lifted by tangy acidity and finishing long and precise.
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Wine Spectator
Refined and elegantly layered, with floral apple, spiced lees and mineral notes that glide along a structured finish. Drink now through 2021.
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.