Winemaker Notes
Elegant. Brilliant. Subtle. Electricity pulses through this high elevation Chardonnay. Hazelnut, white truffle and clove lift the perfume of fresh tilled spring earth. Apple blossom, lavish mid-palate stone, tea biscuit. Likewise with a complexity so great, words are hard to find. So I invite you to find some of your own. Magnificent.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2016 Chardonnay Frenchman Hills tasted like a top Corton with its powerful, full-bodied notes of caramelized orchard fruits, earthy minerality, and spice. It’s one of the bigger, richer wines in the lineup yet it gains purity and elegance as it sat in the glass.
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James Suckling
This has a combination of rich aromas and flavors with crispness to the structure. Lemons and just-ripe peaches sit in sleek formation, holding through to the crisp, dry and chiseled finish.
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Wine Spectator
Rich, yet crisp and graceful, with baked pear, toasty lees and spice flavors, taking on a dynamic structure toward the finish.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2016 Chardonnay Frenchman Hills Vineyard is made from Wente clones that express a core of fruit, rich with energy and notes of lush apples, pear tart and lemon panna cotta. Full-bodied and robust in the mouth, the wine moves subtly across the mid-palate, lingering on the finish with an eerie softness that is shy and not as generous as previous vintages. 229 cases made. Rating: 90+
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.
A large and geographically diverse AVA capable of producing a wide variety of wine styles, the Columbia Valley AVA is home to 99% of Washington state’s total vineyard area. A small section of the AVA even extends into northern Oregon!
Because of its size, it is necessarily divided into several distinctive sub-AVAs, including Walla Walla Valley and Yakima Valley—which are both further split into smaller, noteworthy appellations. A region this size will of course have varied microclimates, but on the whole it experiences extreme winters and long, hot, dry summers. Frost is a common risk during winter and spring. The towering Cascade mountain range creates a rain shadow, keeping the valley relatively rain-free throughout the entire year, necessitating irrigation from the Columbia River. The lack of humidity combined with sandy soils allows for vines to be grown on their own rootstock, as phylloxera is not a serious concern.
Red wines make up the majority of production in the Columbia Valley. Cabernet Sauvignon is the dominant variety here, where it produces wines with a pleasant balance of dark fruit and herbs. Wines made from Merlot are typically supple, with sweet red fruit and sometimes a hint of chocolate or mint. Syrah tends to be savory and Old-World-leaning, with a wide range of possible fruit flavors and plenty of spice. The most planted white varieties are Chardonnay and Riesling. These range in style from citrus and green apple dominant in cooler sites, to riper, fleshier wines with stone fruit flavors coming from the warmer vineyards.