Winemaker Notes
Suggested pairings are pan fried crab cakes, grilled trout in a Meyer lemon butter sauce, warm goat cheese and pear salad and roasted poultry.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Leading off the Chardonnays, the 2012 Chardonnay Cuvee Diana is a blend of four vineyards in the Sta. Rita Hills AVA. Seeing roughly 25% of the blend through malolactic fermentation and aging 13 months in 26% new French oak, it’s a pretty, elegant and nicely textured white that offers up-front citrus blossom, white flowers and hints of toast on the nose. It’s an outstanding effort, yet has a forward, supple feel.
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.
The largest and perhaps most varied of California’s wine-growing regions, the Central Coast produces a good majority of the state's wine. This vast California wine district stretches from San Francisco all the way to Santa Barbara along the coast, and reaches inland nearly all the way to the Central Valley.
Encompassing an extremely diverse array of climates, soil types and wine styles, it contains many smaller sub-AVAs, including San Francisco Bay, Monterey, the Santa Cruz Mountains, Paso Robles, Edna Valley, Santa Ynez Valley and Santa Maria Valley.
While the Central Coast California wine region could probably support almost any major grape varietiy, it is famous for a few Central Coast reds and whites. Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon and Zinfandel are among the major ones. The Central Coast is home to many of the state's small, artisanal wineries crafting unique, high-quality wines, as well as larger producers also making exceptional wines.