Winemaker Notes
Pair this wine with a bacon/onion tart, truffled eggs or octopus salad.
Professional Ratings
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Wine & Spirits
The 35-year-old chardonnay vines at Demuth are hampered by phylloxera and thin hillside soils, but nutrient-building cover crops have revived them. Demuth is a sunny, windy site and the mature vines seem to capture that climatic tension in plump, sunny fruit that smells completely fresh, like meadow flowers and green tea. The flavors are pulled between simple, peachy deliciousness and the earthy imprint of the fruit, resulting in a vinous and satisfying chardonnay.
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Wine Enthusiast
This taut young wine needs time to show more personality. An aroma like fresh-baked bread and lightly toasted almonds leads to a firm mouthfeel and tight flavors like crisp green apples and peach skin. All this should soften and open up later, so drink after 2018.
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.
Surrounded by redwood forests and often blanketed in chilly, ocean fog, the Anderson Valley is one of California’s most picturesque appellations. During the growing season, moist, cool, late afternoon air flows in from the Pacific Ocean along the Navarro River and over the valley's golden, oak-studded hills. High and low temperatures can vary as much as 40 or 50 degrees within a single day, allowing for slow and gentle ripening of grapes, which will in turn create elegantly balanced wines.
The Anderson Valley is best known for Pinot Noir made in a range of styles from delicate and floral to powerful and concentrated. Chardonnay also shines here, and both varieties are often utilized for the production of some of California’s best traditional method sparkling wines. The region also draws inspiration from Alsace and produces excellent Riesling, Gewürztraminer, Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris.