Notes: Brilliant yellow-gold color reveals new oak influence. Toasted, nutty oak nose opens up to reveal mango and pineapple and floral notes. On the palate, tropical fruits/banana intermingle with pretty acid backbone. This wine has just begun to reveal itself and finishes with toasty, carmelly (if such a word exists) oak notes with a hint of citrus and lemon verbena shining through…much more to come as this fleshes out and matures in the bottle. Cameron Confidential: A famous Sonoma winery came to us late last summer with an opportunity: they had two ranches, which they had contracted for read more...additional growth but had been unable as yet to use the fruit. Rather than break the contracts, they wanted to make the wines for us. With supply tightening on chardonnay we leapt at the opportunity. The house style of this producer is a brighter style of RRV chardonnay with judicious use of oak and no malolactic fermentation. These wines are built to pair well with food and this is evidenced by the producer’s huge presence on US wine lists. Their production processes are second to none with hand-sorting, whole cluster pressing, and top-quality French oak barrel fermentations. 50% of this blend was fermented in new oak barrels and is one of three blends we assembled from the numerous blocks harvested from two Russian River Valley Ranches. Compare at $25-30 which is where the producers RRV Chard is priced. (hide)