Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine & Spirits
The Pacific influence is immediately apparent in this fresh, oceanic chardonnay. It’s grown at five estate vineyards, hovering at 1,900 feet along Skyline Boulevard. The vineyards were planted in the mid-’80s on fractured sandstone; three of them are dry farmed. Fermented in barrel without added yeast, this moves into tank to rest for six months before bottling without filtration. The resulting wine is as crunchy as an apple, as pale and tart as lemon cream. Everything about it has a sense of restraint; the hints of white flowers and crushed seashells parallel the delicate chardonnay fruit expression. The finish keeps cleaning up after itself, as if cajoling you to bring on the food, whether Dungeness crab or something richer, like roasted sweetbreads.
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.
The largest and perhaps most varied of California’s wine-growing regions, the Central Coast produces a good majority of the state's wine. This vast California wine district stretches from San Francisco all the way to Santa Barbara along the coast, and reaches inland nearly all the way to the Central Valley.
Encompassing an extremely diverse array of climates, soil types and wine styles, it contains many smaller sub-AVAs, including San Francisco Bay, Monterey, the Santa Cruz Mountains, Paso Robles, Edna Valley, Santa Ynez Valley and Santa Maria Valley.
While the Central Coast California wine region could probably support almost any major grape varietiy, it is famous for a few Central Coast reds and whites. Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon and Zinfandel are among the major ones. The Central Coast is home to many of the state's small, artisanal wineries crafting unique, high-quality wines, as well as larger producers also making exceptional wines.