Winemaker Notes
The 2017 Chardonnay has a voluptuous, ripe nose of lemon peel and candied tropical fruit followed by vibrant citrus throughout the palate with a flinty, saline quality and a hint of toast on the finish.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
Looking first at the Chardonnays, the 2017 Chardonnay Freestone Vineyards comes from a site on the Sonoma Coast and spent 13 months in 42% new French oak. It’s a winner, offering terrific notes of ripe peach, citrus oil, and salty minerality, medium to full body, good acidity, and fabulous overall balance.
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James Suckling
A white that grows slowly on the palate with dried apples and light pear and lime character. Medium body, bright acidity and a clean and vivid finish. Serious and linear. Drink now.
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Wine Enthusiast
Bright and fragrant in aromas of jasmine and lemon rind, this wine impresses in its textured minerality of wet stone and sea spray. Structured and complex, it shines in a light-bodied approach that never holds back in flavors of apple and pear.
Joseph Phelps Vineyards is a family-owned winery committed to crafting world class, estate-grown wines. Founded in 1973 when Joe Phelps purchased a former cattle ranch near St. Helena in the Napa Valley, the winery now controls and farms nearly 375 acres of vines on eight estate vineyards in St. Helena, the Stags Leap District, Oakville, Rutherford, Oak Knoll District, Carneros and South Napa Valley. In 1999, the Phelps family added 100 acres of vineyard property near the town of Freestone on the Sonoma Coast, where Phelps now grows Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.
Phelps is best known for its flagship Napa Valley blend of red Bordeaux varietals, Insignia, first produced in 1974. Awarded Wine Spectator's "Wine of the Year" in 2005, Insignia is widely regarded as a qualitative benchmark for California winemaking.
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.