Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A beautifully aged wine that retains all its original richness and ripeness, while adding many layers of complexity. Very rich, almost unctuous in texture and deeply soaked in flavors of poached pears, caramel apples, preserved lemons and toasted nuts.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
From a smooth, relatively leisurely vintage, the 2013 Chardonnay Charles Heintz Vineyard is drinking beautifully! Alluring tones of matchstick and candle wax give way to dried guava and exotic herbal undertones. The full-bodied palate is rich and satiny, its power balanced by fresh acidity, and its flavors go on and on in the mouth, driven by its dreamy texture.
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Vinous
The 2013 Chardonnay Charles Heintz Vineyard is exquisite. Bright, airy and wonderfully nuanced, it offers up white flowers, mint, lemon peel, slate and dried flowers with lovely mid-palate pliancy and fine overall balance. The 2013 is a Chardonnay of understatement and total finesse. I especially admire how it explodes with strong tropical inflections on the back end.
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.
A vast appellation covering Sonoma County’s Pacific coastline, the Sonoma Coast AVA runs all the way from the Mendocino County border, south to the San Pablo Bay. The region can actually be divided into two sections—the actual coastal vineyards, marked by marine soils, cool temperatures and saline ocean breezes—and the warmer, drier vineyards further inland, which are still heavily influenced by the Pacific but not quite with same intensity.
Contained within the appellation are the much smaller Fort Ross-Seaview and Petaluma Gap AVAs.
The Sonoma Coast is highly regarded for elegant Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and, increasingly, cool-climate Syrah. The wines have high acidity, moderate alcohol, firm tannin, and balanced ripeness.