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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.
Vintage 2006
Rain, rain go away
The 2006 harvest finished in early November and will go down as a “grower’s year” as Napa Valley faced a variety of challenges from New Year flooding to spring’s continued wet weather that delayed budbreak. By early June, the sun came out and vines began to bloom and set fruit. In mid-July a record-setting 10-day heat wave struck, but canopies had not yet been thinned and young clusters were shaded from the hot sun. August’s cooler weather continued throughout harvest, allowing for moderately paced and deliberate ripening and a long harvest period. Rain came in the first week of October, but the white varieties were in and the black varieties were not damaged.