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Wine Description
The Story
All of our ten vineyard designate Chardonnays are marked first and foremost by regional characteristics. Beyond that lies the personality of each of the vineyards from which they hail. All of the sites are planted to the same clone, a California heritage selection that we have been using for close to thirty years. Each wine is produced in the same fashion, with the focus being on the traditional techniques that elicit the earth driven, complex noble sulfides and resulting minerality inherent in the fruit from each site.
Each of our Chardonnay vineyards exhibits characters unique to the site, and hence unique to the wines bottled as vineyard designates. The bottling of wines of site is not a process we take lightly, as it is the main focus of our efforts. We often take years to assess the quality and individual personality of a site prior to deciding to bottle it on its own. We have been working with many of these sites for well over twenty five years.
Produced solely from one specific block at the Kistler Vineyard, the only section of the vineyard that has a broken shale interwoven with the red volcanic ash. Since its planting in 1989, the block stood out in our minds, and clearly called for a separate bottling. Produces one of our most complete and complex chardonnays, and nears perfection on an annual basis.
Vintage 2003
Unpredictable … that’s what you are
The unpredictable nature of the 2003 growing season began with a series of early heat spikes in March, followed by the wettest April on record. A long cool summer allowed the fruit flavors to evolve beautifully ahead of the sugar accumulation. Heat spikes in September helped move the harvest forward after many felt it would be a late year.