Winemaker Notes
With an expansive finish, this wine pairs wonderfully with lobster ravioli or seared mahi-mahi.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Another terrific white is the 2014 Chardonnay Oliver's Vineyard, which is located in the Edna Valley and was planted in 1991 (it's named after Talley Farms founder Oliver Talley). Barrel-fermented and aged 15 months in 16% new French oak, it's a richer, mineral-laced effort that offers lots of buttered orchard fruits, caramelized citrus and brioche to go with a textured, layered style on the palate that still has impressive purity, tension and acidity. Drink it over the coming 5-6 years.
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Connoisseurs' Guide
Talley’s Chardonnay from Oliver’s Vineyard is a solid, very well-structured wine that opts for polish and fruity precision rather than touting high ripeness and extravagant oak, and, if never an especially flamboyant effort, it is wonderfully sustained in focus. It is at once both full and fairly lively in manner with a certain youthful buoyancy to its lengthy flavors, and its notable sense of seamless construction is evident at every stop. It is thoroughly enjoyable right now owing to its lack of angles and edges, but it is in no danger of tiring soon and will age effortlessly thanks to it very careful composition.
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.
California’s coolest wine growing area, Edna Valley excels in the production of high quality Central Coast wines like Pinot noir, Chardonnay, Rhône Blends and aromatic white wines. It has a cool Mediterranean climate and an incredibly long growing season, giving late-ripening varieties plenty of opportunity to develop great phenolic complexity.
Its northwest to southeast orientation creates a direct path for cool Pacific air and fog to penetrate the valley from the Los Osos and Morro Bay area inwards. Low hillsides of both calcareous and volcanic soils are home to much of the vineyard acreage of the Edna Valley.