Winemaker Notes
The pinnacle of everything we’ve learned and accomplished, the Martinelli Family planted Woolsey Road to their exacting specifications. The resulting Chardonnay is laser focused.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2022 Chardonnay Woolsey Road Vineyard is a bright, youthful yellow/green-tinged color and offers a lot of transparency in its character in this vintage. It reveals pure notes of fresh peach, floral perfume, preserved citrus, well-detailed spices, and smoky stones. The palate is fresh and focused and has a lot of tension, and it’s long on the palate, with fantastic intensity and structure. This site produces tiny little berries, which lends a pleasing tannic-like structure, along with great acidity and depth.
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Decanter
Legendary for its old Chardonnay vines and unusual mix of disparate soils, Ritchie Vineyard is home to Ramey's 20 rows, planted in 1972. Part of this selection includes Old Wente Clone. “We have worked with the same 20 rows since 2002,” says Claire Ramey. This wine exudes a beautiful floral lift, while the palate is nothing short of a steel beam of intensity, softened by a juicy core. Layers of citrus peel, apricot, and poached pear unfold, leading to a fabulous sprinkling of crunchy sea salt on the finish. One of the most food-friendly wines in the lineup, it demands pairing with rich fish or chicken dishes. Mineral intensity lingers long on the finish, reinforcing its precision and structure.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2022 Chardonnay Woolsey Road Vineyard comes from Wente selection vines planted in 2007 by the Martinelli family. The grapes were harvested before the Labor Day heat wave on August 17, and the wine was barrel-fermented. It underwent full malolactic conversion and was matured for 20 months in 20% new French oak barrels. It has slowly unfolding scents of honey, orange blossom, crème brûlée and matchstick. The palate is taut and energetic, with focused acidity and slowly opening stone fruit flavors. As it warms in the glass, it reveals exuberant tropical and honey tones, and it has a tremendously long finish driven by its luxurious, mouth-coating texture.
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James Suckling
A broad, generous yet firmly textured white that has an almost chewy texture and vibrant, lively, crisp citrus and green apple flavors. So distinctive, fresh and structured. From a 3-acre plot of of older vines on a Martinelli family property. An ideal wine to cellar for a few years.
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Wine Spectator
Leaps out of the glass with vibrancy, offering notes of hard lemon candy, ginger tea, grilled peach and ripe, salted melon. Lemon zest, lemon verbena and chamomile aromatics add to the complexity, while a fabulous thread of acidity keeps the flavors in focus and the finish fresh and long.
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 standout region for its decidedly Californian take on Burgundian varieties, the Russian River Valley is named for the eponymous river that flows through it. While there are warm pockets of the AVA, it is mostly a cool-climate growing region thanks to breezes and fog from the nearby Pacific Ocean.
Chardonnay and Pinot Noir reign supreme in Russian River, with the best examples demonstrating a unique combination of richness and restraint. The cool weather makes Russian River an ideal AVA for sparkling wine production, utilizing the aforementioned varieties. Zinfandel also performs exceptionally well here. Within the Russian River Valley lie the smaller appellations of Chalk Hill and Green Valley. The former, farther from the ocean, is relatively warm, with a focus on red and white Bordeaux varieties. The latter is the coolest, foggiest parcel of the Russian River Valley and is responsible for outstanding Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.