Winemaker Notes
Sisters Chardonnay is a wine with lifted floral aromas and great length and complexity on the palate. Sisters will reward patience with more complex aromas of white truffle and lifted floral notes to augment the flinty, fresh citrus and peach qualities the wine has in its youth.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2019 Chardonnay Sisters is notable for its purity and layering of aromas, with defined white peach and nectarine accented by nuances of hazelnut, beeswax, graphite and citrus blossom. The palate is silky and seamless, with expansive, delicately honeyed fruit and a very long finish streaked with matchstick character. It's gorgeous now yet will develop savory complexity in bottle over the next decade.
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Wine & Spirits
Larry Stone’s Sisters, named for his mother and aunt, is beautifully structured, owing perhaps to the shallow soils and underlying basalt on the estate vineyard which give the wine its mineral undertone. It is also spectacularly complex, leading with scents of cracked wheat, hazelnuts and lees, Thai pineapple and nutmeg and caramel, all of this held in remarkable suspension—tense, bright, layered, coordinated around a sunny, joyous richness. Taut and impressive.
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Wine Enthusiast
A whiff of pine needle and pungent white-flower accents lead into a well-structured wine with concise citrus and apple flavors. It's tight, dense and long, with a flinty note trailing on the finish. It's a stylish effort that should be at its best from 2025 to 2035.
Cellar Selection -
James Suckling
Aromas of lemon peel, lily and dried thyme. Medium-bodied with bright acidity. Nice length and clarity. Focused, with a fresh finish.
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Wine Spectator
A handsome white, refined and steely in structure, with expressive apple and star fruit flavors laced with crushed stone and spice.
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.
One of Pinot Noir's most successful New World outposts, the Willamette Valley is the largest and most important AVA in Oregon. With a continental climate moderated by the influence of the Pacific Ocean, it is perfect for cool-climate viticulture and the production of elegant wines.
Mountain ranges bordering three sides of the valley, particularly the Chehalem Mountains, provide the option for higher-elevation vineyard sites.
The valley's three prominent soil types (volcanic, sedimentary and silty, loess) make it unique and create significant differences in wine styles among its vineyards and sub-AVAs. The iron-rich, basalt-based, Jory volcanic soils found commonly in the Dundee Hills are rich in clay and hold water well; the chalky, sedimentary soils of Ribbon Ridge, Yamhill-Carlton and McMinnville encourage complex root systems as vines struggle to search for water and minerals. In the most southern stretch of the Willamette, the Eola-Amity Hills sub-AVA soils are mixed, shallow and well-drained. The Hills' close proximity to the Van Duzer Corridor (which became its own appellation as of 2019) also creates grapes with great concentration and firm acidity, leading to wines that perfectly express both power and grace.
Though Pinot noir enjoys the limelight here, Pinot Gris, Pinot Blanc and Chardonnay also thrive in the Willamette. Increasing curiosity has risen recently in the potential of others like Grüner Veltliner, Chenin Blanc and Gamay.