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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Decanter
From the cooler Eola-Amily Hills, also on volcanic soils, this opens with alluring aromas of petrichor and more time in the glass reveals smoky Mirabelle plums and radiant freshness. This vivid brightness is also apparent on the concentrated and beautifully textured palate, with convincing structure and poise. Fermented in both steel and wood, this is sophisticated, sprightly and utterly mouthwatering.
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James Suckling
This has a very convincing core of stony, minerally elements with bright, yellow citrus fruit that leads to a palate that has a stony, dense and fresh feel. Good weight and texture, wrapping tight and dry.
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Wine Enthusiast
The wines from Drouhin's Roserock vineyard, in the Eola-Amity Hills AVA, offer a nice counterpoint to the more familiar Dundee Hills bottlings. This young wine is smooth and supple, with medium ripeness. Lemon, peach and pear fruit flavors combine gracefully, with a toasty wrap pulling the wine into focus.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Aged 10 months in about 15% new oak, the 2017 Chardonnay gives scents of apple pie, Meyer lemon and quince with notes of crushed stone, toast and Greek yogurt. Light to medium-bodied and silky, it has restrained, minerally fruits with juicy acidity and a long finish. This could use another year in bottle to put on a touch of weight.
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Wine Spectator
Delicately spirited, with lively apple, pear and spice flavors that build toward a polished finish. Drink now.
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.