Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Rich and brooding with intensely perfumed oak, this is a layered white made from grapes grown throughout the appellation. It delivers medium-bodied weight and grip, with lush apple and gingersnap flavors.
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Wine & Spirits
A blend of fruit from vineyards on the coastal side of Sonoma County, many providing the more ambitious single-vineyard wines for Patz & Hall, this is the freshest of the 2016 chardonnays we tasted from the winery. The wine’s clarity is impressive, tightening around peach-pit flavors and fleshier notes of nectarine and kumquat. Its oak influence remains in the background, reading as cinnamon notes and crossing over into mineral edges that bring to mind sandstone. It’s plump, lively and rich, delivering exactly what you’d want from a coastal chardonnay.
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Jeb Dunnuck
The entry-level Chardonnay is the 2016 Chardonnay Sonoma Coast and was aged, on lees, in 32% new Burgundy barrels. Light gold colored with supple notes of orchard fruits, white flowers, and spice, it has adequate acidity, a forward texture, and a clean, classy finish. It's a rock-solid introduction to the wines of this estate.
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Wine Spectator
This is focused on the minerally side, with vibrant acidity supporting the dried peach, melon and Fuji apple flavors accented by a twist of citrus rind. Chamomile hints show on the finish.
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.