Winemaker Notes
This Chardonnay leads with clean, fresh aromas of apple, honeydew, white flowers, shortcake and a touch of nuttiness. On the palate, the wine is generous and round, with flavors of citrus tart, white peach, almonds and spice with a delicious combination of minerality and richness. The finish is long.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Super fresh aromas of lemon and lime zest, leading to fresh white peaches. This has a very impressive sense of purity and clarity that follows to the fresh, linear palate. Impressively refined chardonnay. Drink now.
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Wine Enthusiast
Domaine Drouhin Oregon's new Eola-Amity wine continues to impress. Supple, seductive and rippled with kiwi, apple, citrus and melon flavors, it's nicely ripe and well melded. The barrel influence is modest, which perfectly suits fruit this good.
Editors' Choice -
Wine Spectator
Polished and refined, with expressive apple, ripe cantaloupe and spice flavors that take on richness on the long finish. Drink now through 2020. Top 100 Wine Of 2018
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.
Running north to south, adjacent to the Willamette River, the Eola-Amity Hills AVA has shallow and well-drained soils created from ancient lava flows (called Jory), marine sediments, rocks and alluvial deposits. These soils force vine roots to dig deep, producing small grapes with great concentration.
Like in the McMinnville sub-AVA, cold Pacific air streams in via the Van Duzer Corridor and assists the maintenance of higher acidity in its grapes. This great concentration, combined with marked acidity, give the Eola-Amity Hills wines—namely Pinot noir—their distinct character. While the region covers 40,000 acres, no more than 1,400 acres are covered in vine.