Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2017 Chardonnay is terrific, with pretty pineapple, white flowers, and white peach notes as well as a medium-bodied, elegant style on the palate. Coming all from the Alexander Valley and brought up in 39% new French oak, it's beautifully done and should have 4-6 years of prime drinking.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2017 Chardonnay offers up wonderfully intense tropical fruit notes of pineapple upside-down cake, guava and passion fruit with touches of brioche, butterscotch and toasted cashews. Full-bodied, the palate has a lovely oiliness to the texture and plenty of freshness lifting the intense tropical flavors to a good, long finish.
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Wine & Spirits
Graham Weerts blends this wine from two of the top parcels at the Jackson family’s Alexander Mountain Estate, Upper Barn and Cougar Ridge. It’s a bold chardonnay, powerful in flavor yet integrated, its oak prominent even as the wine feels tense and clean. As it opens with air, the flavors take on the layered richness of an almond confection while the fruit sustains a bright, refreshing lift.
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.
Nearly a northern extension of Napa Valley, Alexander Valley starts just north of the small, Knights Valley, and is just a few minutes drive from the Napa town of Calistoga. It is Sonoma County’s hottest AVA. But the Russian River, which runs through the valley, creates cooler pockets and its soft, alluvial soil is ideal for grape growing, especially Cabernet Sauvignon. In fact, some believe that Alexander Valley Cabernets truly rival the best from Napa Valley and many of the heavy-hitter producers have largely invested here.
In addition to Cabernet Sauvignon, which makes up over 50% of plantings, Merlot and old vine Zinfandel thrive here. Ample, fleshy Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc dominate white wine production. Some old-vine plantings of Grenache have also been discovered and more recent experiments with Sangiovese and Barbera show great promise.