Winemaker Notes
Located in the southwestern reaches of Napa County, where a rare mix of volcanic and marine sediment soils meet to produce a wine of depth and elegance, often touched with high pitched tones of iodine, and an oyster shell like minerality.
Professional Ratings
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Connoisseurs' Guide
As deep as any in the current Kistler Chardonnay contingent and arguably, at least for the nonce, the most broadly expressive of the bunch, this one sourced from Lee Hudson’s Carneros vineyard is a tour de force presentation wherein the richness, range and layering inherent in top-echelon Chardonnay are on full display. It is, on the one hand, bright and balanced yet, on the other, amazingly deep and concentrated in its fruit. It stands as ready proof that great Chardonnay can be structured and luscious at one and the same time and, in this case, as ageworthy as it is downright delicious while young
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Jeb Dunnuck
Also from Carneros, the 2017 Chardonnay Hudson Vineyard comes from the original E block spanning 9 acres and vines planted in the early 1990s. It’s one of the more masculine wines, offering tons of salinity and rocky minerality as well as notes of orchard fruits, pineapple, iodine, and crushed flowers. With bright acidity, medium to full body, and a great finish, it’s going to be better with a year in bottle and keep for another decade.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2017 Chardonnay Hudson Vineyard offers dried white flowers, toast, gunflint and rocky notions to begin, opening out to baked apple, white peach, yogurt and lemon peel. Medium-bodied, rounded and toasty in the mouth with youthfully restrained fruit, it has seamlessly woven, bright acidity and finishes very long and minerally.
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Wine Spectator
Well-structured, featuring direct and focused white fruit flavors that offer hints of dried thyme. Finishes with vibrant minerality and rich acidity that linger on an elegant frame. Drink now through 2025.
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 standout region for its decidedly Californian take on Burgundian varieties, the Russian River Valley is named for the eponymous river that flows through it. While there are warm pockets of the AVA, it is mostly a cool-climate growing region thanks to breezes and fog from the nearby Pacific Ocean.
Chardonnay and Pinot Noir reign supreme in Russian River, with the best examples demonstrating a unique combination of richness and restraint. The cool weather makes Russian River an ideal AVA for sparkling wine production, utilizing the aforementioned varieties. Zinfandel also performs exceptionally well here. Within the Russian River Valley lie the smaller appellations of Chalk Hill and Green Valley. The former, farther from the ocean, is relatively warm, with a focus on red and white Bordeaux varieties. The latter is the coolest, foggiest parcel of the Russian River Valley and is responsible for outstanding Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.