Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
Coming from the cooler Edna Valley just south of San Luis Obispo, the 2017 Chardonnay It's All Good Talley Oliver's Vineyard was whole cluster pressed into barrel and spent 15 months in 70% new French oak. It has a wonderfully pure, classy bouquet of sautéed orchard fruits, white peach, white flowers, spice box, and honeysuckle. With a layered, medium to full-bodied texture, subtle oak, integrated acidity, and flawless balance, it's a thrilling California Chardonnay from an incredible winemaker. Drink it over the coming 4-5 years.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
This is the first time Paul Lato has made a Talley Oliver's vineyard Chardonnay, with fruit from 28-year-old vines on calcareous sandy clay loam. Aged for 15 months in 70% new French oak, the 2017 It's All Good Chardonnay Talley Oliver's has a lovely open nose of honey toast, toasted hazelnut, warm baking spice, lemon curd, spiced peach cobbler and apple pie with stone and gunflint hints—great depth of layers here. It's medium-bodied, intense and precise with singular, ethereal texture to support the fruity, spice and savory layers, finishing very long and layered. Stunning!
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.