Winemaker Notes
Blend: 100% Chardonnay
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
Coming from chalky soils and old vines, the 2019 Chardonnay Roza Hills is another medium-bodied, vibrant, yet still concentrated Chardonnay from this team. Stone fruits, white flowers, and sappy herb notes define the bulk of the aromatics, and it's medium-bodied, vibrant, and balanced on the palate. It shows the slightly cooler, fresher style of the vintage and is certainly one of the top whites from Washington in 2019.
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James Suckling
Lovely aromas of warm citrus, jasmine and sliced almond. Medium-to full-bodied. The bright fruit is grounded by dark minerality. Complex and velvety strutured. Straw and toasted herbs come through. Drink or hold.
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Vinous
Fresh and lithe, the 2019 Chardonnay Roza Hills is sourced from a high-elevation site in the Yakima Valley. Beautifully textured with good length, it delivers vanilla cream with shades of white peach, banana and baking spice-dusted-brioche on the palate. Gorgeous to consume now, this has another decade of life ahead of it.
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.
An important winegrowing state increasingly recognized for its high-quality reds and whites, Washington ranks second in production in the U.S. after California. Washington wines continue to gain well-deserved popularity as they garner higher and higher praise from critics and consumers alike.
Washington winemakers draw inspiration mainly from Napa Valley, Bordeaux and the Rhône as well as increasingly from other regions like Spain and Italy. Most viticulture takes place on the eastern side of the state—an arid desert in the rain shadow of the Cascade mountains. Irrigation is made possible by the Columbia River. Temperatures are extreme, with hot and dry summers and cold winters, during which frost can be a risk.
Washington’s wine industry was initially built on Merlot, which remains an important variety to this day, despite having been overtaken in acreage planted by Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah. Bordeaux blends and Rhône blends are common as well as single varietal bottlings. Washington reds tend to express a real purity of concentrated fruit. The best examples have a bold richness, seamless texture, plush or powdery tannins and flavors such as licorice, herb, forest floor, espresso and dark chocolate.
In terms of white wine from Washington state, Riesling is the state’s major success story, producing crisp, aromatic examples with plenty of stone fruit that range from bone dry to lusciously sweet. Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc perform nicely here as well, and Viognier is beginning to pick up steam.