Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This has a restrained array of lemon and chalky mineral elements on the nose, leading to a palate that has a long, supple and succulent core of fresh and zesty, crisply focused citrus and white-peach flavor. Long and impressive. Drink now.
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Wine & Spirits
From a 1983 planting of two clones of chardonnay, this savory white is leesy, dense and structured, with scents of roast almond and bread crust surrounding a focused, tart pear core of fruit. It carries itself with poise, tight and firm, with a dusty mineral texture that may remind you of Chablis. (303 cases)
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2016 Lavinea Chardonnay is an excellent effort. TASTING NOTES: This wine is complete in every way. Enjoy its impressive aromas and flavors of savory spices, earth, a bit of the Old World with a piquant-spiced chicken stew of brown rice and wild mushrooms. (Tasted: November 1, 2019, San Francisco, CA)
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Wine Enthusiast
Fresh and deep, this offers ripe fruit flavors of apple, Asian pear and white melon. It was fermented in barrel with native yeast and 20% new oak. The structure, as with all Lavinea wines, is perfectly balanced for optimal tension and texture.
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.
Running north to south, adjacent to the Willamette River, the Eola-Amity Hills AVA has shallow and well-drained soils created from ancient lava flows (called Jory), marine sediments, rocks and alluvial deposits. These soils force vine roots to dig deep, producing small grapes with great concentration.
Like in the McMinnville sub-AVA, cold Pacific air streams in via the Van Duzer Corridor and assists the maintenance of higher acidity in its grapes. This great concentration, combined with marked acidity, give the Eola-Amity Hills wines—namely Pinot noir—their distinct character. While the region covers 40,000 acres, no more than 1,400 acres are covered in vine.