Winemaker Notes
The Chardonnay estate is a barrel selection. Since each barrel ferments with its own yeast and ages at its own rate, each barrel becomes very distinct. Before bottling, Jason tastes each barrel. Those barrels which speak to the longest aging potential become the Original Vines Reserve. This estate, on the other hand, is blended from those barrels which offer the most immediate pleasure.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Salted-caramel and some dried-lemon and apple-turnover aromas follow through to a full body with a creamy, dried-fruit finish. Tangy and edgy. Serious. Intellectual.
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Wine & Spirits
For 2019, the estate’s fiftieth pick, Jason Lett focused on vines descended from a 1960s mass selection at the Draper Ranch. This chardonnay smells rich, of pineapple and candied ginger, pear and a hint of dried apricot. And yet there is such tension on the palate you’ll forget the richness and focus instead on the texture, layered and brimming with complex flavors. Fascinating now, it should age beautifully.
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.
Home of the first Pinot noir vineyard of the Willamette Valley, planted by David Lett of Eyrie Vineyard in 1966, today the Dundee Hills AVA remains the most densely planted AVA in the valley (and state). To its north sits the Chehalem Valley and to its south, runs the Willamette River. Within the region’s 12,500 acres, about 1,700 are planted to vine on predominantly basalt-based, volcanic, Jory soil.