Winemaker Notes
The 2016 Blanc de Blancs has bright and fresh aromas of green apple, apricot and orange blossom. The fruitful fragrance intermingles with hints of honey, and lemon zest. Freshly sliced peaches, pear and bright pineapple flavors carry vibrant length on the palate.
While this wine can be enjoyed by itself as an apéritif, it is also perfect with fresh oysters and other shellfish, crab cakes, ceviche and grilled sea bass. It is also delicious with lemon chicken and Thai curries. Serve with aged Gouda or other hard cheeses, and as a counterpoint to soft triple creams.
Critical Acclaim
All VintagesA dense and layered white with cooked apples, pears and praline. Full body. Plenty of fruit flavor. Fresh and vivid. Vinous and fun. Yet, serious at the end. Drink now.
100% Chardonnay. A perennial winner when it comes to fine Blanc de Blancs, Schramsberg hits the mark once again with this first-rate effort. In this outing, the wine shows a good deal of slightly toasty, autolyzed richness while still showing the lighter step of the category and, in all ways, is a complete and genuinely elegant sparkler with a marvelously fine and very long-lasting mousse. A wine with the balance and brightness to work famously with food, it is also one whose layered complexity invites meditative savoring on its own.
Sleek, with pinpoint focus, offering harmonious Meyer lemon, candied almond and fresh ginger flavors that fan out on the crisp finish. Drink now.
The Davies family has been making sparkling wine for 50 years, and this Blanc de Blancs has become their flagship. It’s 100 percent chardonnay and this vintage is firm and clean, with clarity to its pale, juicy apple fruit and savory, chalk-like notes from aging on the lees. Refreshing to drink on its own or with any shellfish.
The nose of the 2016 Blanc de Blancs is bright and fresh, with scents of quince peel, red apples, floral perfume, brioche and a nutty undercurrent. The light-bodied palate is dry with energetic mousse and a nice balance of mineral and tirage character, finishing with fantastic freshness.
In 1965, Jack and Jamie Davies founded Schramsberg and set out to make world-class sparkling wine in the true méthode traditionelle style on the property originally established in 1862 by German immigrant Jacob Schram. There were only 22 bonded wineries in Napa Valley and fewer than 100 acres of California vineyards planted to Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Schramsberg was the first California winery to provide a Blanc de Blancs in 1965 followed by a Blanc de Noirs in 1967. Now their son, Hugh Davies, leads the winery’s management and winemaking team.
The Schramsberg estate in Napa Valley’s famed Diamond Mountain District is a registered historic landmark with Napa’s first caves, hand-dug in the 1880s, and its first hillside vineyards. Quality focus drives all aspects of wine production starting with access to over 120 cool-climate sites in Carneros, Marin, Mendocino and Sonoma, which result in over 200 separate lots. Unique among California sparkling wine houses, Schramsberg ferments about 25 percent of its juice in oak barrels to produce rich, flavorful, complex wines.
Most of Schramsberg’s viticultural and winemaking practices are carried out by hand: grapes are hand harvested, the wines are handcrafted, and the bottles are stacked and riddled in underground caves. The family and the winery embody excellence and innovation in winemaking, as well as preservation of their land, their history and their community.
Reaching up California's coastline and into its valleys north of San Francisco, the North Coast AVA includes six counties: Marin, Solano, Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino and Lake. While Napa and Sonoma enjoy most of the glory, the rest produce no shortage of quality wines in an intriguing and diverse range of styles.
Climbing up the state's rugged coastline, the chilly Marin County, just above the City and most of Sonoma County, as well as Mendocino County on the far north end of the North Coast successfully grow cool-climate varieties like Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and in some spots, Riesling. Inland Lake County, on the other hand, is considerably warmer, and Cabernet Sauvignon, Zinfandel and Sauvignon Blanc produce some impressive wines with affordable price tags.
Representing the topmost expression of a Champagne house, a vintage Champagne is one made from the produce of a single, superior harvest year. Vintage Champagnes account for a mere 5% of total Champagne production and are produced about three times in a decade. Champagne is typically made as a blend of multiple years in order to preserve the house style; these will have non-vintage, or simply, NV on the label. The term, "vintage," as it applies to all wine, simply means a single harvest year.
