Winemaker Notes
This vintage presents golden-yellow with white flowers, fresh apricot, and lemon zest aromas. A distinct mineral structure on the palate expands to nectarine, white peach, baking spice, and brioche giving this playful wine length and tension through the finish.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Chardonnay Cuvée Agustina Richard Dinner Vineyard, a barrel selection, is a stunning wine that exemplifies power and elegance. It opens toasty, and with time in the glass, it reveals a very pretty, understated perfume of apricots, jasmine and citrus blossoms with savory, honeyed undertones and a shell-like top note. Medium-bodied, it fleshes out in the mouth to powerful, savory fruits in a satiny, fresh, lifted frame, finishing very, very long. Paul Hobbs says this is the only vineyard that didn't require heavy thinning in 2018.
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James Suckling
This is a dense and intense chardonnay with lots of sliced-apple and oily character. Big and rich. Even more than opulent, yet it holds itself up with freshness and minerality. Wild white.
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Wine Spectator
Voluptuously creamy, with a lilting spiciness to the pure-tasting ripe white fruit, melon and quince paste flavors, backed by vibrant acidity. The juicy finish lingers with brioche notes and dried mango and pineapple accents that are focused and well-crafted.
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.
Defined more by altitude than geographical outline, the Sonoma Mountain appellation occupies elevations between 400 and 1,200 feet on the northern and eastern slopes of the actual Sonoma Mountain and is part of the greater Sonoma Valley appellation. The mountain reaches 2,400 feet; its hills separate the cooling winds of Petaluma Gap from the Sonoma Valley.
On a cooler western flank, Pinot noir, Chardonnay and Syrah enjoy a great deal of success. Vineyards on its warmer, eastern side, interspersed with heavily forested areas, tend to include Cabernet Sauvignon, Sauvignon Blanc, Zinfandel, and Syrah. Given its complexity of topography and mesoclimates, Sonoma Mountain excels with a wide range of grape varieties.