Winemaker Notes
Blend: 84% Chardonnay, 16% Pinot Noir
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This dry and beautifully aged bubbly is made from 84% Chardonnay and 16% Pinot Noir. Rich gold in color, it opens with fascinating and well-developed aromas of toasted baguette, toasted walnuts and marzipan, followed by a warm, buttery flavor that's backed by baked apple and cinnamon. The fine-beaded texture is luxurious and the finish is long and lingering. Best through 2024.
Cellar Selection -
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
This is Schramsberg's top cuvée. The 2010 J. Schram is made of 84% Chardonnay and 16% Pinot Noir. The nose is rich and savory, driven by its time on tirage: pastry, mushrooms, coffee and crème brûlée scents mingle with notions of quince paste and apple pie. The palate is voluminous and rich but surprisingly fresh, with a very pretty interplay of pure fruits and toasty character. It has a fine, creamy mousse and a long, nuanced finish. This is drinking wonderfully right now.
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Wine Spectator
Opulently styled yet impeccably structured, featuring apple and lemon tart flavors, laced with notes of roasted nuts and spicy cinnamon that glide on a plush finish. Drink now through 2020.
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Wine & Spirits
Sean Thompson and Hugh Davies focus this wine on chardonnay (84 percent of the blend), selecting the best lots of the vintage and aging it more than seven years on the lees. This is principally Carneros fruit, from Schwarze, Hudson and Hyde, with a significant contribution from the Keefer Ranch in Russian River Valley. Age brings richness to the wine, contrasting notes of fresh apple and white cranberry with hints of brioche and baked apple. It offers depth and refreshment, as well as a compelling lingering essence of fresh fruit.
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.
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.
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.