Santa Rita Hills Chardonnay
The Santa Rita Hills region enjoys bright sunshine throughout the growing season, while enduring punishing cold winds off the Pacific Ocean. This climate dichotomy creates Chardonnay with both citrus tension and freshness along with a rich, more complete mouthfeel.
The oceanic plankton fossils, or diatoms, lend a mineral, saline thread to the wine while also creating a hostile growing environment for the vines. Add these growing challenges to north-facing vines that receive less sunlight and you create ideal growing conditions for complex Chardonnay.
Our Chardonnay grapes are whole-cluster pressed and typically fermented in 25% new French oak barriques and puncheons. Following primary fermentation, the wines are racked and transferred to 15-hectoliter foudres, custom made for us by renowned Burgundian cooperage, Ermitage. During the aging process, the wine remains unstirred on the lees and is allowed to go through 100% malolactic fermentation. After the wine has aged 15 months in barrel, we designate the lots to be bottled as Penny labels before completing the final blend for our Estate Chardonnay.
Penny Chardonnay
Rosa
Chardonnay
Rosa’s fruit comes from a block with north-facing exposures on highly calcareous soils. Its budwood was sourced directly from the historic Mount Eden Vineyard, which reportedly derived its original budwood from the Grand Cru site of Corton-Charlemagne.
It is a notoriously fickle clone that is extremely difficult to farm, but the results are definitely worth it.
Minted in 1722, the image of the “Rosa Americana” appears on a colonial period coin under license for only one year from the British Crown. With this wine’s decadent floral and fruit aromas and striking complexity, we feel the image of a beautiful flower best evokes its character.
2021 Rosa Chardonnay
Pick date: 9/11
Brix: 22
Acidity: 6.6 g/L
PH: 3.33
Barrel protocols: Crushed, whole cluster pressed, racked to stainless, settled overnight, fermented in 228 L. barrique (20% new), racked to foudre, racked to stainless, fined and filtered.
Massale
Chardonnay
Before and after phylloxera, European growers devoted to quality would select their best vines for propagation. They would observe vines for years, select them for particular traits and then propagate the grouping, a process known as massale selection.
This is still practiced widely today in Burgundy. It is also thought that elevating the choice of the vines themselves over their clonal makeup encourages the dominance of terroir over breeding. Given our fixation on Burgundian tradition and techniques, we decided to incorporate these concepts into two of our Chardonnay blocks, planting four different clones—two in each.
The Massale Penny label is the result of this exercise. After some experimentation, we have limited the inputs to the historic Wente clone and clone 548, which were planted together in limestone soils at the highest point in our main vineyard and magically complement each other in this special blend.
The Massale label prominently features the Liberty Cap, a recurring symbol of freedom in American history. Our Massale Chardonnay vines are similarly “free,” as they are not restricted to a single clone and remind us of the strength that can be derived from diversity.
2021 Massale Chardonnay
Pick date: 9/3, 9/9
Brix: 21.5
Acidity: 7.0 g/L
PH: 3.24
Barrel protocols: Crushed, whole cluster pressed, racked to stainless, settled overnight, fermented in 228 L. barrique (15% new), racked to foudre, racked to stainless, fined and filtered.
Liberté
Chardonnay
The Liberté block is the only east-west oriented Chardonnay planting in the vineyard and our only block of Clone 76, a French selection widely used in the Grand Cru and Premier Cru vineyards of Burgundy.
This Dijon clone, prized for its ability to purely convey the attributes of site, is characterized by its aromatics, finesse and balance. The wine displays a steely minerality, and while it took several years for this block to come into its own, the results were well worth the wait.
In keeping with our core values, Liberté Chardonnay features the dominant image on the liberty penny or “large cent,” a much bigger, pure copper U.S. penny in circulation from 1793 to 1857 that was replaced by the smaller, mixed-metal coin we know today.
2021 Liberté Chardonnay
Pick date: 9/3
Brix: 21.0
Acidity: 7.7 g/L
PH: 3.15
Barrel protocols: Crushed, whole cluster pressed, racked to stainless, settled overnight, fermented in 228 L. barrique (15% new), racked to foudre, racked to stainless, fined and filtered.
Estate Chardonnay
Estate
Chardonnay
Our Estate Chardonnay is a blend of several different clonal selections from vines grown in a mixture of calcereaous soils in seven distinct vineyard blocks, which naturally creates a great diversity of flavor and nuance. The blend includes grapes from the Penny labels described above, as well as other blocks that allow the wines to be more approachable in their youth.
These delicious Chardonnays display a citrus freshness and richer flavor akin to the mix of Meyer lemon, yuzu and lemon oil. Given its high acidity and structure, our Estate Chardonnay is food-friendly wine that is immensely enjoyable upon release, but will age well for many years.
2021 Estate Chardonnay
Pick date: 9/11
Brix: 22
Acidity: 6.7 g/L
PH: 3.27
Barrel protocols: Crushed, whole cluster pressed, racked to stainless, settled overnight, fermented in 228 L. barrique (neutral), racked to foudre, racked to stainless, fined and filtered.