Big Basin Coastview Vineyard Chardonnay 2013
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Wine
Enthusiast -
Robert
Parker
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Wine Enthusiast
Light and a little cloudy in the glass, this is a delicious and deep wine from a vineyard in the eastern Salinas Valley, with lime blossoms, squeezed lemons, wet cement and salted white peach on the nose. The palate deftly pairs chalk, sour cream, and lime zest with dried white peach, sea salt and fresh churned butter. Editors' Choice.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
My favorite of the two Chardonnays is the 2013 Chardonnay Coastview Vineyard. From a cool site in Monterey County, it gives up crisp orchard fruits, citrus, blossom, white flowers and hints of brioche (it spent 15 months in French oak) to go with a medium-bodied, fresh, classically styled feel on the palate. Energetic, vibrant and almost racy with bright acidity, it was bottled unfined and unfiltered. There's only 200 cases, but it's superb and well worth tracking down.
Other Vintages
2016-
Wilfred
Wong -
Wine
Enthusiast -
Jeb
Dunnuck
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Jeb
Dunnuck
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Robert
Parker
Located in the heart of the Santa Cruz Mountains, Big Basin Vineyards is terraced into a steep hillside first planted to grape vines by French immigrants over 100 years ago. Their winery and the vineyards they work with are located at sites in the Santa Cruz and Gabilan Mountains that are as beautiful as they are exceptional for grape growing. They farm organically and practice minimal-intervention winemaking with the goal of producing wines that transparently and authentically express site and variety.
Big Basin believes that their choice of vineyards, picking at the right time to retain intensity and elegance, and minimalistic winemaking practices are the keys to producing more aromatic and ethereal wines - new world wines with old world soul. Owner and winemaker Bradley Brown has been on a 20 year quest to produce beautiful and soulful wines. Winemaker Blake Yarger joined the team in 2017 and together they are always fine tuning practices to more transparently express the vineyards.
One of the most popular and versatile white wine grapes, Chardonnay offers a wide range of flavors and styles depending on where it is grown and how it is made. While it tends to flourish in most environments, Chardonnay from its Burgundian homeland produces some of the most remarkable and longest lived examples. California produces both oaky, buttery styles and leaner, European-inspired wines. Somm Secret—The Burgundian subregion of Chablis, while typically using older oak barrels, produces a bright style similar to the unoaked style. Anyone who doesn't like oaky Chardonnay would likely enjoy Chablis.
At elevations reaching well over 2,000 feet, the Mt. Harlan AVA in the Gabilan Range is an anomaly among its surrounding Central Coast appellations. Recognizing the splendor of the area and its ideal limestone-rich soils, Josh Jensen chose Mt. Harlan as the home of his Calera Wine Company in the 1970s. Awarded his own AVA in 1990, Calera is the only commercial winery in the appellation.