Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The recently released 1995 Chardonnay Cuvée CH from Kalin Cellars hails from the Charles Heinz vineyard in Sonoma County, and it's one of Terry and Frances Leighton's greatest hits. The wine wafts from the glass with aromas of yellow orchard fruit, toasted hazelnuts, iodine, oatmeal and peaches. The full-bodied, textural palate has considerable gloss and amplitude and the savory complexity that only extended bottle age can bring, but there's plenty of energy too, concluding with a saline, mineral finish. While this seems to be drinking at its peak and it's wide open at the core, who knows what the future will hold: there's certainly no hurry to drink up. Blind, this could pass for a white Burgundy of similar age and considerable pedigree.
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.