Winemaker Notes
-Wine Enthusiast
Our Chardonnay is a barrel fermented blend from all three of our estate vineyards in Santa Rita Hills. Bruno uses mostly seasoned barrels to give the wine a fresh fruit-driven presence without a lot of heavy oak. This is a balanced, elegant and versatile wine that has served as a Santa Barbara benchmark for over 20 years.
Up-front aromas of lemon, vanilla, butter and honey lead to more subtle notes of flowers, nutmeg, and white pepper in this crisp, fresh 2002 Chardonnay. Oak aromas are restrained, and fruit flavors of tart apples and essense of pineapple shine through, finishing with a hint of crème bruleé. Its firm structure can handle rich poultry dishes, cheeses, grilled seafood, and creamy pastas.
Professional Ratings
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.
The largest and perhaps most varied of California’s wine-growing regions, the Central Coast produces a good majority of the state's wine. This vast California wine district stretches from San Francisco all the way to Santa Barbara along the coast, and reaches inland nearly all the way to the Central Valley.
Encompassing an extremely diverse array of climates, soil types and wine styles, it contains many smaller sub-AVAs, including San Francisco Bay, Monterey, the Santa Cruz Mountains, Paso Robles, Edna Valley, Santa Ynez Valley and Santa Maria Valley.
While the Central Coast California wine region could probably support almost any major grape varietiy, it is famous for a few Central Coast reds and whites. Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon and Zinfandel are among the major ones. The Central Coast is home to many of the state's small, artisanal wineries crafting unique, high-quality wines, as well as larger producers also making exceptional wines.