Winemaker Notes
Blend: 100% Chardonnay
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
Easily my favorite in the lineup, the 2018 Chardonnay Roza Hills is all Chardonnay brought up 16 months in 400-liter puncheons, 25% being new. It has a stunning array of chalky minerality, white flowers, toasted bread and assorted citrus, lemon, and honeyed orange fruits. With medium to full-bodied richness, beautiful balance, and a solid spine of acidity, it needs 2-3 years of bottle age yet will evolve beautifully over the following decade.
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James Suckling
Sliced cooked apple with some lemon rind, as well as slightly burnt citrus and crushed stone. Some vanilla undertones. It’s medium-bodied with a lovely core of fruit and linear phenolic tension. Subtle, yet flavorful. Drink now or hold.
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Wine Spectator
Grabs you immediately with its plush ad oily texture and then draws in tropical fruit, apricot blossom and spice flavors that linger on a savory finish.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Chardonnay Roza Hills Vineyard was 100% whole-cluster pressed and fermented half in concrete tanks and half in barrels. The nose offers rich, round and expressive tropical fruit aromas of grilled pineapple and peach with elements of quince paste and apple purée before citrus blossoms and lemon pannacotta sway out of the glass. Medium to full-bodied, the palate is juicy and generous with flavors of peach ring, baked apples and vanilla crème brûlée with a soft nuttiness on the mid-palate. Concluding with a delightfully lingering finish, this is sure to please those who enjoy the more generous styles of Chardonnay from around the world. Only 4,248 bottles were filled after the wine rested for 17 months on the lees in 24% new French oak.
Rating: 92+
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.