Winemaker Notes
Pair this wine alongside grilled chicken, lobster, crab cakes, linguine with white clam sauce.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2021 Chardonnay Estate features gregarious yellow apples, pie crust, toast and baking spice aromas with flinty streaks. The palate is silky and weightless, with a shimmery feel derived from its flinty mineral character and focused acidity, and it has a long, flavorful finish.
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Wine Enthusiast
A toasty aroma and good, lively, pure pear and apple flavors highlight this full-bodied wine from one of the oldest and most iconic Chardonnay vineyards in Sonoma County. The oak char character runs throughout, adding vivid spices into the mix of fruit and caramel.
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Vinous
The 2021 Chardonnay Estate is fabulous. Bright, floral and nuanced, the Chardonnay Estate is a superb wine in this vintage. Lemon confit, white flowers, almond and light buttery notes build effortlessly. Medium in body and impeccable in its balance, the Estate is showing so well today.
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.