Winemaker Notes
This is why Chardonnay is meant for the volcanic, east-facing hillside of Seven Springs Vineyard. To be more exact, Summum illustrates the laser-like precision from the rockier top half of 14 rows of Chardonnay planted almost three decades ago. The wine is elegance. Ripe tree fruit, white flowers, roasted hazelnut and flint are just the entry to a cuvée of volume and delicacy, concentration and well integrated oak in a svelte frame. It recalls the weightlessness and purity of a chiseled premier cru Meursault-Blagny. The finish hangs on, textured and long lasting. As is the life of this wine.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Complex and attractive nose of grilled lemons, dried pineapples, ash, toasted rosemary, flint and salted butter. So much flavor and intensity here, yet elegant and agile and only medium-bodied, with bright acidity. Fantastic salty undertones.
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Decanter
Evening Land's tête de cuvée, this deeply reverberating Chardonnay is sourced from just fourteen vine rows grown on volcanic soils at the heart of the Seven Springs Vineyard’s eastern slope. While powerful in structure, it's a svelte, cutting wine with pure, concentrated lime and grapefruit flavours framed in steel and a nervy, quivering backbone of acidity.
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Wine Enthusiast
The beauty that is Eola-Amity Hills Chardonnay is on full display here. Lemon butter and toasted filbert aromas are joined by a wisp of Genmaicha green tea. Peaches with a touch of cinnamon spice cruise a crisp texture guided by bright acidity. Toasted filberts reappear on the long finish.
Editors' Choice -
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2021 Chardonnay Summum takes some time to shake off its matchstick character before revealing warm white peaches, pie crust and spicy accents. The medium-bodied palate explodes with honeyed, nutty flavors. Its mouth-coating texture is refreshed by vibrant acidity, and it has a very long finish.
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Wine Spectator
Precise and elegantly dynamic, this white unfurls slowly, offering expressive green apple and Meyer lemon flavors, with stony minerality and spicy lees accents that build detail on the lingering finish. Drink now through 2027. 437 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.
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.