Winemaker Notes
Aromas of white peach, macaroon, navel orange, lemon curd, poached pear, rose petal and apricot blossom. The palate has lively acidity, gravely minerality and flavors of Nashi pear, honeydew melon, Golden Delicious apple and flint followed by a long citrus driven finish.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Grilled lemons and white peaches with a supple array of stone fruit on the palate. There’s a lovely sense of layering here and a very freshly focused, lemon and yellow-grapefruit finish.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2016 Chardonnay Yamhill-Carlton has a lovely open nose of spiced apples, acacia honey, lemon cream, toast and dried white flowers. Medium-bodied with a great creamy texture, it fills the mouth with layers of honey toast, cream, ripe orchard fruits and spice, with great mouthwatering acidity and a long floral finish.
Rating: 92+
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.
Yamhill-Carlton, characterized by pastoral, rolling hills composed of shallow, quick-draining, ancient marine soil, is ideal for Pinot noir and other cool-climate-loving varieties. It is in the rain shadow of the Coast Range to its west, whose highest point climbs to an altitude of 3,500 feet. Yamhill-Carlton is actually surrounded by mountains on three sides: Chehalem Mountains to the north, the Dundee Hills to the east and the western Coast Range to its west, which, when it lets Pacific air through, serves to cool the region.
Vineyards grow on the ridges surrounding the two small communities of Yamhill and Carlton and cover about 1,200 acres of this 60,000 acre region, which roughly makes a horse-shoe shape on a map.