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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Wine Enthusiast
A creamy, viscous texture and subtle butter and pear flavors give this attractive wine a deliciousness and smoothness that is quite winning. The wine is medium- to full-bodied, showing mild almond and toast nuances on the palate and finish.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Pouring a rich, youthful golden hue, the 2020 Chardonnay Sun Chase Vineyard is ripe with buttered citrus, fresh flowers, and poached pear. Full-bodied, opulent, and fresh, it’s ripe with loads of golden pineapple, melon, honeysuckle, and baking spices and is long on the palate, with ripeness throughout. Drink it over the next several years.
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.