Evening Land Seven Springs Vineyard La Source Chardonnay 2016
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Winemaker Notes
La Source puts its roots on display in 2016 with a flinty nose and nimble palate defined by notes of
citrus rind and spice. This is an elegant Chardonnay of riveting intensity.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Tight and still pulling itself together, this mixes tart pie cherries with stiff tannins, earth, pepper and bark. The phenolic earthy flavors are offset by the fruit and acid, and the overall mix of components will ultimately fashion a complex wine with a finishing lick of sweet spice from aging in 50% new French oak. Hold for another couple of years and drink from 2020 through 2030.
Cellar Selection -
Wine Spectator
Sleek and vibrant, featuring a lively and focused structure that offers taut lemon and apple flavors, with exotic and spicy lees accents that linger on the finish.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2016 Chardonnay la Source Seven Springs Vineyard offers great honey, toasty and pulverized rock notes on the nose with ripe Golden Delicious apples, faint white apricot and notes of hay. Light to medium-bodied with a wicked streak of acidity and crushed rock character in the mouth, it's accented by honey-drizzled apples flavors and finishes long and very, very minerally.
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Rajat Parr and Sashi Moorman stand at the vanguard of the new world wine. Together they steward the historic Seven Springs Vineyard into its fourth decade. At Evening Land Vineyards, they strive to grow and vinify fine Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Gamay from their historic Seven Springs Estate Vineyard in Oregon's Eola-Amity Hills. Totalling 85 acres under vine; their east-facing vineyard, farmed biodynamically since 2007, was first planted in 1984, and sits atop rocky, volcanic soils.
They are, first and foremost, faithful stewards of the historic Seven Springs vineyard, planted by Oregon wine pioneer Al MacDonald in 1984. On this dramatic east-facing slope, in the iron-rich and rocky, volcanic soils of the Eola-Amity Hills, Al MacDonald undertook what would become one of Oregon's most recognized vineyards. Nestled against a forest of Douglas fir with views eastward to Mt. Hood and Mt. Jefferson, it is immediately evident to any visitor why Al chose this site.
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.