Winemaker Notes
Lush, alluring, and beautifully balanced, this wine displays lovely stone fruit aromas, along with hints of apple and citrus. On the palate, subtle notes of French-oak-inspired vanilla and baking spice complement the generous fruit, with a beam of cool-climate acidity providing poise and finesse.
Professional Ratings
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Tasting Panel
Winemaker Dana Epperson’s 2018 vintage is showing strong—we loved this white for its innate elegance. A unique honeyed-walnut character shows through cedar and baked apple as the wine develops length and more length, with lilting acidity that holds it together so well.
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Wine Enthusiast
Sourced from excellent sites including Heintz Vineyard, Dutton Ranch and Running Creek Estate, this white has wide appeal. Tropical-fruited in flavor and unctuous in texture, it is balanced by sleek acidity.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2018 Migration Sonoma Coast Chardonnay is aromatic, alluring, and persistent. TASTING NOTES: This wine exhibits aromas and flavors of ripe apple, orange peel, and wood. Enjoy it with grilled, bone-in chicken thighs. (Tasted: March 29, 2021, San Francisco, CA)
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.