Winemaker Notes
Delicate orange blossom & citrus notes dancing between tangerine and lemon. Fresh, bright fruit- and mouthwatering tartness. Delightfully-energizing acidity. Full, dense mouthfeel with a touch of honeycomb and nutty, creaminess to balance. Wet stone minerality & a zesty, long finish. This wine has energy.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This wine opens with a gorgeous, memorable nose of biscotti and hazelnut before unleashing a palate of defined tension and acidity. Light and bright, it has focus and an endearing freshness amidst a powerful embrace of tannin that amplifies its structure.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2016 Chardonnay Sonoma Coast was barrel fermented and aged eight months in 14% new French and Austrian oak before finishing élevage in stainless steel. The nose features honeycomb, poached pears, toasted hazelnut and lemon meringue with fresh peach and guava scents. Medium-bodied, it gives wonderful savory, tropical and stone fruit layers, with great juicy freshness and a very long, savory finish with pleasant phenolic grip.
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 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.