Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The intensely citrus-yellow colored 2011 Chardonnay is bright, intense and spicy on the flinty nose, with an amazing lemon zest tone and remarkable concentration. On the palate, this is a dense and textured, tightly tructured and powerful Chardonnay with fine tannins and a very long and intense finish. This is impressive and can still age for more than a decade. Tasted November 2018.
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.
Enhancing quality and diversity of wine grapes in recent years after the Swiss government lifted import controls on wine, Switzerland is beginning to gain some ground aside its European neighbors. While its main variety is the white Chasselas, more than half of Switzerland’s wine production is red. The country has 15,000 ha of vineyards mainly in the cantons of Geneva, Neuchâtel, Ticino, Valais and Vaud.