Winemaker Notes
Pair with all seafood, light poultry, and vegetables of simply on its own.
Professional Ratings
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
Wild, distinctive, and beautiful, the 2015 Resonance Chardonnay exhibits excellent balance and style. The wine's tart nectarine, crisp apple, and racy mineral flavors show that the Willamette Valley is a big-time player in producing some of the world's best efforts of this grape variety. Serve with seared scallops. (Tasted: April 11, 2017, San Francisco, CA)
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Wine Spectator
Expressive aromas of spicy lees and lemon curd open to complex and voluptuous baked pear, nutmeg and toast flavors that linger on the finish.
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.
Stretching southwest from the city of McMinnville, the AVA with the same name covers about 40,000 acres across 20 miles until it meets the Van Duzer Corridor. This corridor is the only break in the Coast Range whose gap allows the cool Pacific Ocean air to flow eastward into the Willamette Valley.
The Pacific's moderating winds hit McMinnville’s south and southeast facing slopes where cool-climate varieties—namely Pinot noir and Pinot blanc thrive on ridges at between 200 to 1,000 feet in elevation.
Soils here are primarily uplifted marine sedimentary loam and silt, with alluvial formations; McMinnville receives less rainfall than its neighbors to the east because it is situated in the rain shadow of the Coast Range.