American Wine Awards 2010: Best Wines $20 and Under In 2008, bad weather in California’s Edna valley drastically cut the amount of fruit from Wolff Vineyard but packed flavor into the grapes. Jeffrey Patterson makes this wine exactly the same way he makes Mount Eden’s pricier Estate Chardonnays, producing a white with vivid flavor of pear, peach and limeBest American Chardonnay Food & Wine Magazine
Release Date: Spring 2010
Jean-Pierre Wolff farms 55 acres of Chardonnay in Edna Valley’s oldest vineyard. A combination of cool weather and drought reduced the chardonnay crop to a mere 1.5 tons per acre, an historic low. Because the clusters were so small and infrequent, the grapes matured unusually early so the harvest finished before the end of September for the first time in twenty three years.
What does this all mean? Great concentration in the nose of citrus, guava, mint with a complexing note of ocean air. Full and rich yet with restraint and finesse on the palate, this Chardonnay offers green apple, ripe pear and, once again, an ocean nuance. (This vineyard is within a rifle shot of the Pacific Ocean.) With low yields comes higher expression of terrior.
