Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The time-honored Bien Nacido Vineyard W Block has been one of California's very best sites. The 2015 Tyler is a top effort. TASTING NOTES: This wine is concentrated, pure, and exotic. Its impressive aromas and flavors of peach skin, apple fruit, and oak are superbly intertwined. Pair its persistent and delicious fruit with a roast duck and a medley of wild mushrooms. (Tasted: May 13, 2019, San Francisco, CA)
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2016 Chardonnay Bien Nacido Vineyard Block W is the most exotic of Justin Willett's Chardonnays this year, offering up a honeyed bouquet of musky peach and orchard fruit, suggesting there may have been a touch of botrytis in the vineyard this year. On the palate, it's medium-bodied, ample and saline, with an expansive attack but a bright, tensile core that wins out on the crisp, precise finish. This is another wine that I'd love to see again after a couple of years in bottle.
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 lesser-known but elite AVA within the larger Santa Barbara district, the Santa Maria Valley AVA runs precisely west to east starting near the coast. The valley funnels cool, Pacific Ocean air to the vineyards more inland, allowing grapes a longer hang time to ripen evenly and achieve their full potential by harvest time. Combined with minimal rainfall, consistent warm sunshine, and well-drained soils, it is an ideal environment for grape growing.
Many of the wineries here are small and highly respected, having established a reputation in the 1970s and 80s for producing excellent Central Coast wines like Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. More recently, Syrah has also proven quite successful in the region. Many vineyards are owned by growers who sell their grapes to other wineries, so it is common to see the same vineyard name on bottlings from different wineries. Bien Nacido Vineyard is perhaps the best-known and most prestigious.