Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Coming from a site in the Santa Maria Valley, the 2021 Chardonnay Le Souvenir Sierra Madre Vineyard offers more minerality and salinity, with crisp citrus and orchard fruits, medium to full body, bright, juicy acidity, terrific mid-palate depth, and complex notes of minty herbs and green almonds. It will benefit from a year of bottle age (you'll be forgiven for opening bottles today) and will keep through 2031.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2021 Chardonnay Le Souvenir Sierra Madre Vineyard comes from 28-year-old Wente clone vines. It underwent full malolactic conversion and was matured in 50% new French oak for 16 months. It has a slowly blossoming fragrance of quince and peach, burnt lemon peel and panna cotta, plus touches of beeswax, hazelnuts and matchstick. The full-bodied palate is concentrated and mouth coating with expansive flavors that demand your attention. It's balanced by fireworks of fresh acidity, streaked with youthful oak spices and has a long, decadent finish. This hedonistic Chardonnay is delicious straight from the bottle.
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Wine Enthusiast
The nose of this single-vineyard expression excites on all fronts, showing chiseled stone and grapefruit peel against a more generous Meyer lemon curd element. The palate is focused and direct, delivering citrus peel and wet stone flavors that cut through the sea salt and apricot core.
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 lesser-known but elite AVA within the larger Santa Barbara district, the Santa Maria Valley AVA runs precisely west to east starting near the coast. The valley funnels cool, Pacific Ocean air to the vineyards more inland, allowing grapes a longer hang time to ripen evenly and achieve their full potential by harvest time. Combined with minimal rainfall, consistent warm sunshine, and well-drained soils, it is an ideal environment for grape growing.
Many of the wineries here are small and highly respected, having established a reputation in the 1970s and 80s for producing excellent Central Coast wines like Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. More recently, Syrah has also proven quite successful in the region. Many vineyards are owned by growers who sell their grapes to other wineries, so it is common to see the same vineyard name on bottlings from different wineries. Bien Nacido Vineyard is perhaps the best-known and most prestigious.