Winemaker Notes
The 2018 Sonoma Coast vintage offered moderate weather, cool evening temperatures and a long, even growing season. The weather conditions were ideal and allowed the grapes to ripen slowly and evenly over the course of summer and early fall. This allowed the grapes to gain flavor complexities and
ripe tannins, while retaining natural acidity. The vineyards offered grapes of exceptional quality and high yields alike. In 2018, the individual Sangiacomo vineyard components were harvested on separate nights and delivered to the winery early in the mornings. They were immediately whole-cluster pressed and barreled down into French oak barrels for fermentation in a temperature controlled cold room to retain bright aromatics and freshness.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2018 Chardonnay Sangiacomo Vineyard offers a bigger, richer style. Lots of apple pie, brioche, honeysuckle, and toasted almond notes dominate the bouquet, and it's medium to full-bodied, has loads of fruit, and shows the rounded, mouthfilling, silky style of the vintage beautifully.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Chardonnay Sangiacomo Vineyard has delicate scents of white blossoms, cashews and poached pears. The palate is light-bodied, fresh and mega silky, beginning delicately and gaining in amplitude on the long, honeyed finish. This will benefit from another couple years in bottle.
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.