Mount Eden Vineyards Edna Valley Chardonnay 2015
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Wine
Enthusiast -
Jeb
Dunnuck
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Wine Enthusiast
Presented with subtlety on the nose, this bottling by the iconic Santa Cruz Mountains winery delivers scents of toasted pine nuts and almonds, tangerine rind and lemon balm. There is racy acidity on the sip, where lemon peel, crisp pear and buttered apple flavors make for a very thorough Chardonnay.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Coming from the cooler, pacific influenced AVA of the Edna Valley, the 2015 Chardonnay Edna Valley is more fruit forward than the Santa Cruz Mountain releases and offers lots of pineapple and tropical aromatics. It’s beautifully balanced, has good acidity and a clean texture. While it was brought up in a mix of new to 5-year-old American oak barrels, you couldn’t tell that from tasting it. There’s over 5,500 cases and it’s a terrific value, as well as a smoking good Chardonnay make by a great winemaker.
Other Vintages
2017-
Robert
Parker
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Robert
Parker -
Wine
Enthusiast -
Wilfred
Wong -
Jeb
Dunnuck - Decanter
Mount Eden Vineyards is a small historic wine estate perched at 2000 feet overlooking Silicon Valley in the Santa Cruz Mountain Appellation, about 50 miles south of San Francisco. Founded in 1945, it is recognized as one of the original “boutique” California winery properties, focusing on small lots of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon. Mount Eden’s lineage of estate bottled Chardonnay and Pinot Noir is the longest in California. Planted in austere, infertile Franciscan shale on a cool, exposed mountaintop, these low-yielding estate vineyards have consistently produced world-class wines for over a half-century. In 2007 Mount Eden acquired an additional 55 acre wine estate in the Saratoga foothills, which was christened Domaine Eden.
Mount Eden Vineyards also produces non-estate Chardonnays from the central coast, primarily Edna Valley. They have great success making Chardonnay from the Wolff Vineyard and are continually recognized as making outstanding wines from that region.
Since 1981 Jeffrey Patterson has guided the winemaking and grape growing at Mount Eden. His emphasis is on wine growing rather than winemaking; and an obsession with gentleness and naturalness in the handling of the grapes and wines is his ongoing passion.
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.
California’s coolest wine growing area, Edna Valley excels in the production of high quality Central Coast wines like Pinot noir, Chardonnay, Rhône Blends and aromatic white wines. It has a cool Mediterranean climate and an incredibly long growing season, giving late-ripening varieties plenty of opportunity to develop great phenolic complexity.
Its northwest to southeast orientation creates a direct path for cool Pacific air and fog to penetrate the valley from the Los Osos and Morro Bay area inwards. Low hillsides of both calcareous and volcanic soils are home to much of the vineyard acreage of the Edna Valley.