Winemaker Notes
Full yellow color. Aromas of lemon drop, crème brulée and orange zest intermixed with strong notes of minerality (wet stones) and fresh hazelnut. Full bodied and mineral driven, this wine displays a creamy texture and very long mineral finish. Built to age gracefully for a decade, this wine is already very approachable.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
Named for Luc’s wife Jodie (as well as for the breeze), the 2021 Chardonnay Ma Douce is inspired by Meursault in its stylistic approach. It pours a ripe yellow color with the light haze that all these wines carry and was raised in one-third new French oak. The nose lifts with lemon curd, light flint, fresh pear, sweet brioche, and white flowers. Full-bodied, with good freshness, it’s long on the palate, with a long custardy finish. It has the structure to be long-lived and cellar worthy, and it’s going to drink well over the next 15 years.
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James Suckling
A seamless, silky feel and luxurious fruit flavors grab your attention in this full-bodied yet balanced wine. Delicious flavors of white peaches, poached pears, toasted almonds, minerals and vanilla bean. Almost sweet, as the name indicates. An incredibly long, lingering finish. Drink now or hold.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
From a vineyard in the Fort Ross Seaview AVA planted on Goldridge soils above the fog line, the 2021 Chardonnay Ma Douce is wonderfully expressive, with compelling notes of toasted grain and roasted pineapple joined by melon and peach. It's full-bodied and silky, with a soft, plush mouthfeel, making it broad and expansive in the mouth, but it has a bright, lingering finish that provides balance and beckons you to take another sip.
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.
On the far western edge of the larger Sonoma Coast appellation, the Fort Ross-Seaview AVA hugs right up against the Pacific coast. Vineyards, planted at rugged elevations between 920 to 1,800 feet, occupy only two percent of the total land in the AVA. Fort Ross-Seaview growers believe that the region boasts an ideal mix of sunshine, cool air and beneficial stress for producing high quality Chardonnay and Pinot noir.