2016 Rivers-Marie Chardonnay Sonoma Coast

Starting with the appellation 2016 Chardonnay Sonoma Coast from Thomas Brown, it offers a beautiful citrus, iris flower, white peach, and salty bouquet as well as a fresh, elegant, impeccably balanced feel on the palate. It picks up a touch of minerality with time in the glass and has real class. It’s going to age great. Rivers Marie is the joint project between the husband wife team of Thomas Rivers Brown (of Schrader) and Genevieve Marie Welsh. The label was created in 2002 and includes wines from both Napa and Sonoma. Their Sonoma focus (which is the focus on this report) is on cool climate sites, and the Summa Vineyard, which was purchased by Brown and Welsh in 2010 located far out in the Occidental Ridge region of the Sonoma Coast, can be thought of as the heart of the estate. I tasted four Chardonnays for this report and six different Pinot Noir, all having singular and distinctive characters, which isn’t a given. These are elegant, Burgundian-styled wines that will benefit from short term cellaring, and I suspect be very long lived.