Winemaker Notes
Perfumed aromatics of honeycomb, quince, candied orange and cardamom lift from this nose along with heady gardenia, white pepper and Meyer lemon. The silky texture of the palate is framed by flavors of verbena shortbread, grapefruit and oyster shell. Beautiful bright and long finish.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Love the aromas of fossilized shells and sliced cooked apples. Quince and aniseed, too. Perfumed. Full-bodied, yet creamy and compact with a beautiful, long finish of honey,straw and lime.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Chardonnay Reserve has lush aromas of quince, apricot, lemongrass and roasted almonds. The medium-bodied palate is creamy and mouth-coating with gently honeyed fruit, plenty of fresh acidity and a long finish. Best After 2023
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Wine Enthusiast
There has been a change (apparently) in vineyard sources from the previous vintage, which carried the new Laurelwood District AVA. This reserve bears the broader Willamette Valley AVA and includes grapes from a wider mix of sites. It's loaded with tasty, toasty flavors of nutmeg, toasted hazelnuts, butter cookie and fresh sliced tree fruits. Framed with lime skin and pea vine phenolics, it's a generous, balanced and thoroughly delicious bottle.
Editors' Choice -
Wine Spectator
Bright and lively, offering crisp yet supple citrus and tropical fruit flavors laced with notes of stone fruit and spice. Drink
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.
The Chehalem Mountains is a northwest-southeast span of several distinct mountains, ridges and peaks in the northern part of the Willamette Valley. Of all of Willamette Valley's smaller AVAs, it is closest to the city of Portland. Its highest summit, Bald Peak at an elevation of 1,633 feet, serves to generate cooler air for the rest of the AVA and its hillside vineyards. The region covers 70,000 acres but only 1,600 acres are planted to vines; soils of the Chehalem Mountains are a mix of basalt, ocean sediment and loess.