Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2021 Chardonnay Estate offers exotic aromas of ripe peaches, honey, pie crust, tangerine oil and musky floral perfume. The medium-bodied palate is satiny and expansive with an impressively concentrated core of spicy fruit. Its broad, mouth-coating texture is balanced by fireworks of fresh acidity, and it has a long, spicy finish with flavor that goes on and on.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Coming from relatively younger vines planted in 2013 and pouring a pale yellow hue, the 2021 Chardonnay Estate takes on delicate floral aromatics of citrus blossoms, quince, and fresh pear. Medium-bodied, it fills the palate with elegant, ripe fruit and is silky-textured, with great balance and a clean finish.
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James Suckling
This shows aromas of golden apples, citrus pith, hints of ground spices, honeysuckle and crushed stones. Medium- to full-bodied with polished, sleek texture and attractive juiciness in the middle. It shows a lingering, textural delicacy with a fresh and citrusy aftertaste.
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Wine Spectator
Spry and sleek, with floral and elegantly layered apple and lemon flavors that glide on the graceful finish. Drink now. 156 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.
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.