Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2014 Chardonnay shows an intense golden-yellow color with a lime-greenish shimmer. On the nose, this is a pure, refined and slightly buttery as well as flinty Chardonnay with elegant intensity and notes of green asparagus, stewed chicory and a hint of caramel. On the palate, this is a generous, textural and tight, tense and lush as well as piquant Chardonnay with fine tannins and a long, intense and saline, quite powerful and complex finish with firm tannins. Very intense and still young Chardonnay.
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.