Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
Made by the talented Matt Courtney, the 2016 Chardonnay Sonoma Coast comes from a handful of sites on the Sonoma Coast and spent 12 months in 20% new barrels before being moved to stainless steel tanks for six months. It’s a riper, rounded Sonoma Coast Chardonnay that has plenty of white peach, currant, and spice notes as well as subtle oak, full body, ample mid-palate concentration, and a great finish. It's a powerful wine that packs some oomph yet stays beautifully balanced. Buy it.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2016 Chardonnay Sonoma Coast is made from declassified barrels of the single-vineyard wines. It has an open nose of lemongrass, stone, white blossoms, spring honey and hazelnut. Medium to full-bodied, it has great concentration in the mouth with loads of floral and honey-nut nuance, juicy acidity and phenolic texture to add support to all those layers, finishing very long and honeyed.
Rating: 93+ -
Wine Spectator
A plump and spicy style, with unctuous pear tart, Fuji apple and red peach flavors that are backed by juicy acidity. Pastry notes linger on the rich and finely textured finish. Drink now through 2024.
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.
A vast appellation covering Sonoma County’s Pacific coastline, the Sonoma Coast AVA runs all the way from the Mendocino County border, south to the San Pablo Bay. The region can actually be divided into two sections—the actual coastal vineyards, marked by marine soils, cool temperatures and saline ocean breezes—and the warmer, drier vineyards further inland, which are still heavily influenced by the Pacific but not quite with same intensity.
Contained within the appellation are the much smaller Fort Ross-Seaview and Petaluma Gap AVAs.
The Sonoma Coast is highly regarded for elegant Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and, increasingly, cool-climate Syrah. The wines have high acidity, moderate alcohol, firm tannin, and balanced ripeness.