Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Nutty hazelnut and stony minerality combine seamlessly in this impressive white from the coastal appellation. Full bodied, concentrated and structured, it imparts steely, lively flavors of lemon peel and tangerine, finishing with a soft silkiness to the texture and overall balance of weight.
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Wine Spectator
Rich and well-sculpted, with lemon-lime notes to the fresh-cut apple, quince and pear flavors. Minerally midpalate, offering refreshing saline and flinty hints on the structured finish. Drink now through 2024.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Plenty of white flowers, salty minerality, and lemon curd notes emerge from the 2016 Chardonnay Fort Ross-Seaview, a beautifully balanced, crisp, classic wine from Ramey that will keep for 7-8 years, probably longer. It’s also a great introduction into the style of wines of Dave Ramey.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2016 Chardonnay Sonoma Coast comes mainly from Martinelli's Charles Ranch vineyard, with vines planted in 1982. Grapes are whole-cluster pressed and fermented in barrel with bâtonnage, then aged 12 months in 12% new French oak. It has a lovely toasty nose with buttered popcorn hints over lemon pith, soft melon and stone. Medium to full-bodied, it has concentrated ripe fruits in the mouth with accents of toast and roasted almonds, lifted by great tangy acidity and finishing very long and very lively.
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.
On the far western edge of the larger Sonoma Coast appellation, the Fort Ross-Seaview AVA hugs right up against the Pacific coast. Vineyards, planted at rugged elevations between 920 to 1,800 feet, occupy only two percent of the total land in the AVA. Fort Ross-Seaview growers believe that the region boasts an ideal mix of sunshine, cool air and beneficial stress for producing high quality Chardonnay and Pinot noir.