Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Chardonnay Pastorale Vineyard, aged 13 months in 55% new French oak, has open-knit aromas of baked yellow apples, lemon meringue, beeswax and spices. In the mouth, it's medium-bodied and satiny in texture, with minerally fruits, bright acidity and a delicate finish. This is youthfully coiled and will benefit from another year or two in bottle.
Rating: 94(+)
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James Suckling
A medium-bodied chardonnay with spice, dried-apple and pineapple character. Some pear, too. Creamy and flavorful, yet textured.
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Wine Enthusiast
Estate-grown, this wine is light and airy, tasting of the fog that lingers so frequently in this area of Freestone, just miles from the sea. Lemony and floral, it retains mouthwatering acidity throughout, and a lightness of oak, fully integrated that adds just enough weight and a hint of baking spice.
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.