2011 Napa Valley Chardonnay

The 2011 Chardonnay Spring Mountain has a light gold color with a slight greenish hue. The wine offers hints of pineapple, poached pear and nectarine, nicely integrated wood, good acidity, and a medium to full-bodied, concentrated mouthfeel. I realize this wine is already 5+ years old and from an excessively maligned vintage, but this Chardonnay is strutting its stuff and showing well, with at least another 2 years of high-class drinking ahead of it.

The 2011 Chardonnay Estate, impresses for its breadth and pure personality. Peach, apricot, honey, flowers, mint and anise all meld together in a rich, sumptuous Chardonnay tempered by the cool year and the underlying minerality of this hillside site planted by David Abreu and Ric Forman in the 1980s. In 2011, the fruit came in on October 25, exceedingly late by any standard.

(from grapes picked on October 25; the only chardonnay bottled here in 2011, as the Russian River Valley fruit was barely at 19 degrees Brix when the rains started in early October and the grapes turned brown, according to estate manager Wesley Steffens): Good full yellow with gold highlights. Big, ripe aromas of pineapple, butterscotch and coconutty lees. Fat and ripe on the palate, with a thread of lemony acidity running through the pineapple and honey flavors. Finishes broad and full, with a zesty quality. This fully ripe 2011 chardonnay finished with a bit of malic acidity and less than one gram per liter of residual sugar.