Winemaker Notes
Tropical fruit, pineapple, citrus, and white flowers. It’s a crisp and full-bodied Chardonnay, with balanced minerality and acidity.
Professional Ratings
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Tasting Panel
Reaching an elevation of 1,400 feet, Sun Chase is the highest vineyard in the Petaluma Gap, with a cool maritime climate. Aromas of apple tart, chamomile, and lemon butter show the effects of 11 months of French oak aging. The mouthfeel is rich without overt decadence; pineapple cake and honey coat the palate. Minerality comes in midway, allowing for a crisper finish.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Chardonnay Sun Chase Vineyard is scented of toast, honeysuckle, sweet corn and baked apples with a honeyed undercurrent. The palate is medium to full-bodied, rounded and savory with well-woven freshness and a long, honeyed finish.
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.