Winemaker Notes
The 2017 Chardonnay Sun Chase Vineyard is scented of freshly baked bread, Golden Delicious apple and passion fruit with acacia blossom accents. Medium-bodied with good layers of ripe fruit and honey-nut flavors, it has juicy acidity and finishes on a pretty honeyed note
Professional Ratings
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Tasting Panel
From an estate vineyard that sits 1400 feet above the Pacific, this Chardonnay offers up creamy, weighty notes of tapioca and vanilla pudding. Notes of green and red apple are generous, combining with tangerine and caramel mid-palate. The finish is rich and savory with tarragon, chamomile, and a smack of minerality.
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Wine Enthusiast
This is a big, full-bodied and fleshy white wine from the Petaluma Gap mountain vineyard, with an intense imprint of vanilla and nutmeg-laced oak. Stone fruit and pineapple are prominently on display, richly dappled in secondary notes of Gravenstein apple and fig.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2017 Chardonnay Sun Chase Vineyard is scented of freshly baked bread, Golden Delicious apple and passion fruit with acacia blossom accents. Medium-bodied with good layers of ripe fruit and honey-nut flavors, it has juicy acidity and finishes on a pretty honeyed note.
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.