Winemaker Notes
The 2019 Chardonnay has an abundance of floral character, crushed rock, and citrus notes. The palate is filled with lemon zest and freshly sliced pear, tangy acidity, and a layered finish rich in mineral and briny undertones.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2019 Chardonnay Freestone Vineyard is very classy this vintage, with inherent energy derived from the pairing of its goldilocks fruits with bright acidity and shimmery mineral character. The nose offers ripe quince, toasted almonds, saline and beeswax, with toasty hints and an undercurrent of crushed stone. Medium-bodied and satiny, its pure fruits are continually refreshed by all that salty, juicy character, and it has a long, ethereal finish. This deserves another 2-3 years in bottle.
Rating: 96+ -
James Suckling
Lots of praline, coconut and some nougat to the cooked-apple character. It’s full-bodied with a fresh, layered palate. Tight and flavorful at the finish. Shows solid structure.
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2019 Chardonnay Freestone Vineyards offers more Meyer lemon, honeyed toast, spice, and savory mineral aromas and flavors, yet it shows a similar purity, balance, and length on the palate. It opens up nicely with time in the glass, and this medium-bodied, racy, focused beauty has another 5-7 years of prime drinking ahead of it.
Rating: 94+ -
Wine Enthusiast
From the producer's Freestone-region estate vineyards, this wine sings in oyster shell, sea air and crisp apple. With an ethereal quality throughout, it combines a balanced richness of body and mouthfeel with lingering freshness and spice.
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Wine Spectator
Spicy and rich-tasting, with hints of marmalade to the well-knit white fruit and ripe citrus flavors. Buttery richness lingers on the finish, with pastry and tropical fruit accents.
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.