Winemaker Notes
The 2018 Chardonnay opens with generous white flower, lemon zest and fresh pear. A very linear offering with vivid acidity, bright green apple, tart lemon and a mineral driven lengthy finish.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
There are two Chardonnays from this Napa based estate, both terrific wines. The 2018 Chardonnay Freestone Vineyards, aged 13 months in 41% new oak, reveals a medium gold hue as well as rocking notes of buttered lemons, white flowers, and brioche. It's pure, medium-bodied, beautifully balanced, and has a great finish. It gains even more complexity with time in the glass, revealing more green almonds, toasted bread, and mint-laced nuances. I love it today, yet it has a good spice of acidity and is going to evolve gracefully for 4-6 years.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Chardonnay Freestone Vineyard, aged 13 months in 41% new French oak, takes its time on the nose, slowly opening to notes of saline, crushed nuts, lemon peel and quince. The palate is medium-bodied, juicy and very silky, its citrusy fruits opening to savory hints underneath, and it finishes very long and nuanced. Give it another couple years in bottle to gain in amplitude.
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Wine Enthusiast
From estategrown grapes, this impressively layered, complex and cool-climate characteristic white is layered in gravelly texture and crushed rock. Briny ocean influence coats a crisp core of green apple and Meyer lemon, leading to a complete finish.
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James Suckling
This is soft and open with beautiful cooked apple and pie crust. Medium-bodied with a creamy texture and a long, flavorful finish. Tangy and vivid. Drinkable now, but it will age well, too.
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Wine Spectator
Intense minerality accents the sleek pear tart and apple pastry flavors, loaded with rich, vibrant acidity. Viscous midpalate, with angel food and creamy accents on the luscious and well-spiced finish. Drink now through 2025.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2018 Joseph Phelps Freestone Vineyard Chardonnay represents the Sonoma Coast AVA well. TASTING NOTES: This wine is active, bright, and fresh. Its attractive aromas and flavors of tart apples and lively minerality should pair well with shellfish appetizers. (Tasted: February 20, 2020, St. Helena, CA)
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Decanter
Freestone Vineyards is Joseph Phelps Vineyards' 40ha Sonoma Coast project. This Chardonnay, from estate vineyards, spent 13 months in 40% new barriques as well as puncheons. It shows its Sonoma Coast origins on the nose, with notes of fresh bay leaf and green apples. The mid-weight palate has just enough acidity to balance, while the finish is currently tight and short. Drinking Window 2020 – 2030
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Connoisseurs' Guide
The Freestone bottling from Joseph Phelps are typically among the tighter, more-structured Chardonnays when very young, and the 2018 version is no exception, yet even though fairly restrained just now, the wine offers a clear look at fresh and very vibrant, citrus-tinged, green apple fruit with subtle, sweet oak and suggestions of minerals forecasting certain complexity to come. It is both moderately full and fairly crisp in balance without letting acidity become too pronounced, and, if there are sure to be those who revel in its zesty piquancy right now, it has much more in store for those willing to lay it away and wait for another three or four years.
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.