Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
Another huge, yet elegant Chardonnay, the 2015 Chardonnay Seascape Vineyard boasts a deeper gold color to go with a powerful, deep bouquet of buttered citrus, tangerine, baking spice, and awesome salty minerality. With full-bodied richness, a layered, seamless, incredibly pure and precise texture, and a huge finish, this is another incredible Chardonnay from this team. The Seascape Vineyard is located on a panoramic ridge-top west of the town of Occidental facing Bodega Bay and the Pacific Ocean, and this 2015 was barrel fermented and aged 16 months in 42% new French oak.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Seascape Vineyard is located on a panoramic ridge-top west of the town of Occidental facing Bodega Bay and the Pacific Ocean, and was planted in the 1980s to Spring Mountain Chardonnay clonal selection. It receives native yeast fermentation and is barrel fermented in French oak, 42% new, where it ages for 16 months prior to being bottled unfined and unfiltered. The 2015 Chardonnay Seascape Vineyard offers intense grapefruit, orange blossom and lemon peel with hints of cedar and buttered toast. The full-bodied palate is brimming with lemon tart, brine and toasty flavors with a great acid backbone cutting through the concentrated creaminess, finishing with wonderful freshness.
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Wine Enthusiast
Exposed to the coast, this crisp white is racy with flavors of salty pretzel and apple skin. It offers impressive weight and viscosity interwoven with juicy acidity, allowing it to stay fresh and focused in the glass. Freshly squeezed lemon shows on the nose and palate, with a touch of brine and supportive oak.
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.