Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: One of the best surprises in this month of wine tasting, the 2017 Four Vines The Form Chardonnay delivers plenty of rewards at the $20 and under price point. TASTING NOTES: This wine is generous, long, and well-balanced. Its aromas and flavors of dried peach skin, vanilla, and sweet spices make it a pleasure to drink all by itself. Pair it with fresh Dungeness crab in drawn butter. (Tasted: November 17, 2018, San Francisco, CA)
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.
California’s coolest wine growing area, Edna Valley excels in the production of high quality Central Coast wines like Pinot noir, Chardonnay, Rhône Blends and aromatic white wines. It has a cool Mediterranean climate and an incredibly long growing season, giving late-ripening varieties plenty of opportunity to develop great phenolic complexity.
Its northwest to southeast orientation creates a direct path for cool Pacific air and fog to penetrate the valley from the Los Osos and Morro Bay area inwards. Low hillsides of both calcareous and volcanic soils are home to much of the vineyard acreage of the Edna Valley.