Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
Bright orchard fruits, brioche, toasted bread, and honeysuckle notes all emerge from the 2017 Chardonnay Estate. It's medium-bodied and has a tight, vibrant texture as well as some Burgundian style in its texture and acidity. It's a beautiful effort.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2017 Chardonnay Estate, aged 14 months in 20% new French oak, has open-knit aromas of apple pie, crushed stone, sweet spices, quince paste and hay with notions of honeysuckle and honeyed almonds. The palate is medium-bodied, silky and lively, demonstrating great restraint of fruit and just enough of that savory character. It’s refreshed by bright acidity and finishes long and bright.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2017 Talley Vineyards Chardonnay offers excellent richness and brightness on the palate. TASTING NOTES: This wine shows lovely aromas and flavors of savory herbs and dried peach skin. Its mineral-like finish pairs it well with Dungeness crab in a mix of garden greens. (Tasted: August 5, 2020, San Francisco, CA)
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.
One of the coolest growing areas in California, the Arroyo Grande Valley runs from the southwest to the northeast, just a few miles from the Pacific Ocean and is part of the Central Coast AVA. Situated so that cold Pacific Ocean air and fog is allowed to filter into the valley, Arroyo Grande also has an incredibly long growing season. Bud break occurs in February in most years with flowering in May and harvest in late September; the area is classified as cool Mediterranean.
These weather factors combined with the soil types—continental and marine rocks, greywacke, limestone, shale and volcanic—create wines with great concentration and fresh acidity. The cooler end of the valley is perfect for Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and is a good producer of sparkling wines. The warmer, more inland part of the valley is home to some of California’s oldest Zinfandel vines.