Winemaker Notes
The 2022 Affinités Chardonnay, bursting with notes of orange blossom, grapefruit, clingstone peach, and cinnamon bark. Decanter describes as characteristically Willamette Valley, saying: “The wine offers great minerality, ample smoky lemon peel, a saline throughline that is the calling card of great Willamette Valley Chardonnay.
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
‘Chardonnay really suffered with the frosts in 2022, and I was worried about the ripening conditions this vintage, but in general, things worked out,’ says Jean Nicolas Méo. Fruit from Bishop Creek, Spirit Hill and von Oehsen, a site of 20-year-old vines in the Eola-Amity Hills. There is a great deal of minerality. ‘For Chardonnay, this is not a super ripe vintage, it's around 21 or 22 brix. In general, sugars were low, and the wines carry great freshness and the Chardonnays achieved optimum ripeness in a very light way. There is a liveliness,’ Méo concludes. This wine offers great minerality, ample smoky lemon peel, a saline throughline that is the calling card of great Willamette Valley Chardonnay.
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Jeb Dunnuck
The Chardonnay version of L'Ensemble, the 2022 Chardonnay Affinites is a barrel selection and a vintage and appellation wine. It pours a brilliant yellow/silver color and leads with notes of citrus oils, delicate toast, wet stone, white mushroom, and white peach. Medium-bodied and approachable, it floats on the palate with good extract and should age with ease over the coming 6-8 years.
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James Suckling
A beautiful nose of sliced ripe mangoes, white peaches, orange blossoms and crushed almonds with flinty freshness. Medium-bodied, racy and tangy, with a lively, energetic pace and plenty of juicy citrus fruit in the middle. Spiced and savory.
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Wine Enthusiast
A beautifully floral nose includes bits of hyacinth and chamomile to go along with ripe pear and tangy ginger notes. The Affinités feels juicy and crisp in the mouth, with its blazing acidity and flavors of guava, chamomile tea, lemon grass and honeycomb.
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Wine Spectator
Graceful and delicately rich, with layered apple, orange blossom, lemon and spice flavors that sail on the sleek finish. Drink now. 485 cases made.
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.
One of Pinot Noir's most successful New World outposts, the Willamette Valley is the largest and most important AVA in Oregon. With a continental climate moderated by the influence of the Pacific Ocean, it is perfect for cool-climate viticulture and the production of elegant wines.
Mountain ranges bordering three sides of the valley, particularly the Chehalem Mountains, provide the option for higher-elevation vineyard sites.
The valley's three prominent soil types (volcanic, sedimentary and silty, loess) make it unique and create significant differences in wine styles among its vineyards and sub-AVAs. The iron-rich, basalt-based, Jory volcanic soils found commonly in the Dundee Hills are rich in clay and hold water well; the chalky, sedimentary soils of Ribbon Ridge, Yamhill-Carlton and McMinnville encourage complex root systems as vines struggle to search for water and minerals. In the most southern stretch of the Willamette, the Eola-Amity Hills sub-AVA soils are mixed, shallow and well-drained. The Hills' close proximity to the Van Duzer Corridor (which became its own appellation as of 2019) also creates grapes with great concentration and firm acidity, leading to wines that perfectly express both power and grace.
Though Pinot noir enjoys the limelight here, Pinot Gris, Pinot Blanc and Chardonnay also thrive in the Willamette. Increasing curiosity has risen recently in the potential of others like Grüner Veltliner, Chenin Blanc and Gamay.