Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2015 Chardonnay Wayfarer Vineyard has an intense nose of pineapple, guava and ginger with honeysuckle, marzipan, cashews and brioche. The medium-bodied palate is incredibly taut for such a gregarious nose with wonderful tension framing the pronounced tropical flavors beautifully, finishing with lingering savory notes and a gorgeous creamy texture. Drink through 2017-2027.
Rating: 96+ -
Wine Enthusiast
A youthful, tightly concentrated wine, this opens slowly to reveal a great depth of character and depth of flavor. Toffee, Meyer lemon and crisp apple meet a balanced richness of integrated oak, sublime texture and floral aromatics and brine that tease of the sea.
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Wine Spectator
Ultrarich and flavorful, with a tasty mix of tangerine, nectarine, white peach and honeysuckle flavors woven together in a full-bodied style that's broad and expansive, highlighting the core citrus flavors. Ends with a long, juicy, lingering aftertaste. Drink now through 2020.
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.
On the far western edge of the larger Sonoma Coast appellation, the Fort Ross-Seaview AVA hugs right up against the Pacific coast. Vineyards, planted at rugged elevations between 920 to 1,800 feet, occupy only two percent of the total land in the AVA. Fort Ross-Seaview growers believe that the region boasts an ideal mix of sunshine, cool air and beneficial stress for producing high quality Chardonnay and Pinot noir.