Winemaker Notes
With what little quantities of the exquisite 2015 vintage there are to offer - Small Vines is thrilled with the intensity, rich-velvet textures, layered flavors and a thoughtful depth and complexity these wines possess. Again, with the 3rd year of the drought, the season was consistently dry all year- resulting in even tinier little berries on miniature, jewel-like clusters- and far fewer of them! All of these wines were 100% dry farmed as well as grown organically, as usual. There is powerful structure and intense concentration in these low alcohol and balanced wines.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2015 Chardonnay Sonoma Coast has a nose of toasted almonds, honey-drizzled peaches and baking bread plus suggestions of apple blossoms and allspice. Medium-bodied, it delivers plenty of stone fruit and savory flavors with a racy line and good length.
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 vast appellation covering Sonoma County’s Pacific coastline, the Sonoma Coast AVA runs all the way from the Mendocino County border, south to the San Pablo Bay. The region can actually be divided into two sections—the actual coastal vineyards, marked by marine soils, cool temperatures and saline ocean breezes—and the warmer, drier vineyards further inland, which are still heavily influenced by the Pacific but not quite with same intensity.
Contained within the appellation are the much smaller Fort Ross-Seaview and Petaluma Gap AVAs.
The Sonoma Coast is highly regarded for elegant Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and, increasingly, cool-climate Syrah. The wines have high acidity, moderate alcohol, firm tannin, and balanced ripeness.