Winemaker Notes
#56 Wine Enthusiast Top 100 Cellar Selections of 2019
Brilliant golden straw with a shimmering silver edge. The aromas are open and complex, perfumed with lemon curd, quince, white flowers and honeyed white peaches with hints of cloves. Lively and vibrant on the tongue, with a lovely creaminess, the citrus and flinty notes are precise and harmoniously knitted as they travel across the palate with a tightening long finish. This is a wine that is enjoyable now and will gain complexity as it ages.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This wine was barrel fermented in 20% new French oak. It's racy, inviting and aromatic, with sharp flavors of lemon, gooseberry, lime and cantaloupe. Tart and stylish, it's built for aging, though immediately enjoyable. Drink now–2028.
Cellar Selection -
James Suckling
Some grilled nuts, a mealy edge and a bright array of yellow peaches and lemons, framed in gently nutty complexity. The palate is beautifully fleshy and smoothly styled with a long, plush and polished core of fruit to close. Drink now.
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Wine Spectator
Polished and supple, with delicately complex and alluring pear and star fruit flavors, accented by crushed stone and spice notes. Drink now through 2021. 220 cases made.
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Wine & Spirits
Leading with scents of roasted nuts and golden apple, this wine is hemmed in by oak, though the sunniness of the 2016 vintage bursts through that oak frame with time in the glass. Unresolved for now, this needs six months or more in the cellar. (220 cases)
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.
Yamhill-Carlton, characterized by pastoral, rolling hills composed of shallow, quick-draining, ancient marine soil, is ideal for Pinot noir and other cool-climate-loving varieties. It is in the rain shadow of the Coast Range to its west, whose highest point climbs to an altitude of 3,500 feet. Yamhill-Carlton is actually surrounded by mountains on three sides: Chehalem Mountains to the north, the Dundee Hills to the east and the western Coast Range to its west, which, when it lets Pacific air through, serves to cool the region.
Vineyards grow on the ridges surrounding the two small communities of Yamhill and Carlton and cover about 1,200 acres of this 60,000 acre region, which roughly makes a horse-shoe shape on a map.