Winemaker Notes
The warm, buttery straw color is inviting to the eye, and the nose shows toasted French oak and traditional Bosc pear, red apple and cinnamon. Rich, savory flavors of toasted hazelnut with balanced acidity lifts oak off the palate and keeps you wanting more.
This Sonoma Coast Chardonnay impresses with its great balance and complexity. It has a nice butterscotch component without the all-too-common flabbiness, making food pairing easy. Tuna tartare, clam chowder and steamed Sea Bass are all excellent complements for this Chardonnay.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This is a juicy, full-figured white, with a core of minerality that persists effortlessly on the palate. Wet stone, anise and green apple combine for maximum flavor within tones of well-integrated oak.
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 vast appellation covering Sonoma County’s Pacific coastline, the Sonoma Coast AVA runs all the way from the Mendocino County border, south to the San Pablo Bay. The region can actually be divided into two sections—the actual coastal vineyards, marked by marine soils, cool temperatures and saline ocean breezes—and the warmer, drier vineyards further inland, which are still heavily influenced by the Pacific but not quite with same intensity.
Contained within the appellation are the much smaller Fort Ross-Seaview and Petaluma Gap AVAs.
The Sonoma Coast is highly regarded for elegant Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and, increasingly, cool-climate Syrah. The wines have high acidity, moderate alcohol, firm tannin, and balanced ripeness.