tasting / savor / Oregon Chardonnay
Domaine Drouhin Arthur Chardonnay Dundee Hills Willamette Valley 2020 (13.5% ABV)
| 94
AJ | Pale silver-bright, with gold glints. Leesy and warm, faintly honeyed; the smell of summer’s end. No overt fruits but attractive as is. Fine concentration, drive, and depth here, and a very polished, seamless mouthful; beautifully crafted. It clearly needs some cellar time to find articulacy and gather expressive weight, but this classy, aquiline wine bodes extremely well for the future. Poised, fresh, and dramatic, yet with an incipient richness, too: a difficult balance to strike, carried off with assurance here. | 95 AR | A youthful pale gold in color, this has an immediately beguiling aroma of sweet oak and peach, an impression confirmed when you taste the wine, which has plenty of ripe peach flavor and fruit purity, framed by an appealing, buttered-popcorn oak-sweetness that makes it a thoroughly enjoyable crowd-pleaser, nonetheless. | 93 DW | Lots of intense flavory savoriness: macadamia nuts, cream, stone fruit, and a zesty riptide of pithy citrus. Lovely intensity and focus, with clean-cut acidity; energy, long, tapering finish. | 93
Morgen Long Willamette Valley Chardonnay 2019 [Eola-Amity Hills Willamette Valley](13% ABV)
| 94
AJ | Bright, pale silver-gold in color. Sweet, fresh, graceful, and restrained: taut, lemony fruits; some creamy lees; planty, almost algae-like sappiness behind, too. A convincing and very finely crafted aromatic profile. Plunging depth of fruit here and rather sheer at this stage. On the palate, the wine is less giving than it is aromatically just now. But there is a lot here and a sense of grand refinement to come. Very Côte de Beaune-like (St-Aubin) in its purity and conviction. My score is with an eye to the future, but this certainly seems serious, convincing, pace-setting Oregon white wine. | 95 AR | A pale greeny gold, this shows an instant touch of class in its freshness and complexity of aroma. It follows through in the glass, where, with a tingle on the tongue, the flavors are full, ripe, and intense. Plenty of fruit purity and concentration are framed by a deft touch of nutty oak and balancing acidity in a way that’s not showy but deeply satisfying and hugely enjoyable to drink. | 94 DW | Arresting concentration and balance. So harmonious and silky: pillow-soft but detailed, too. Finely stitched with quince and sweet pear, cream, freshly baked bread, and wonderful, fine-point acidity. A lingering finish. Pure pleasure. | 94
Domaine Serene Chardonnay Evenstad Reserve 2019 [Dundee Hills Willamette Valley] (13.5% ABV)
| 94
AJ | Pale and silvery, with green-silver glints. Very gentle citrus qualified by oat-flake and cream, with some angelica and crystallized fruit behind: admirable aromas, teasing and beckoning the drinker into the glass. Outstanding aromatic work here. Very dry, intense, athletic, deep, and searching. Quite lemony and pure, with some grape and grapefruit; incisive and long. There are milky, lees-derived complexities, too, but they are subtle, understated, and supportive, as they should be.
212 | THE WORLD OF FINE WINE | ISSUE 79 | 2023
I’m sure time will bring intricacies; surely just at the beginning of its life. A lovely infant, but everything about it is impeccable, and I’m very confident about its future. A splendid example of the potential and—let’s underline this—the achievement of Oregon with Chardonnay. | 96 AR | Behind the pale golden hue, there’s a degree of stylish nutty oak in the aroma promising complexity. When you taste, it delivers on flavor and texture, with good intensity of fruit purity underpinned by a firm spine of acidity that softens down toward the finishing line as it combines with subtle, nutty oak and saline freshness in a seamlessly balanced, satisfying dry white. | 93 DW | Pale colored, silvery. Tight and taut and terse, but mouthwatering, too: green apple and pear and almond, but also citrus juiciness. Insistent, cool, and stony-mineral finish. Wonderful energy and lively brightness on the finish, and plenty packed into its still slender frame. Classy. | 94
00 Wines VGW Chardonnay 2018 [Mostly Eola-Amity Hills Willamette Valley] (13.4% ABV)
| 93
AJ | Still very pale: silver-gold wine with silver glints. Fresh and pungent, with lots of citrusy verve and sap. Bright and engaging. Excellent wine here, with length, drive, and an incipient, expansive sweetness of fruit and expression to the fruit. Pure and pristine, yet rewarding and inviting; creamy and long. Delicious Chardonnay and very distinctively Oregon in its freshness and vivacity, its sunlit fruits, its crunchy, understated, leanly energetic style, and its fine cellar craft. | 94 AR | Pale in color with lemon and limey glints. This has an intriguing bouquet that unusually blends both the sweet and the savory in almost truffley, umami-like combination. In the mouth, the stone- fruit sweetness combines in similar fashion with an appealing savory quality underpinned by a saline dry freshness that balances it out nicely. | 92 DW | A nose of Chantilly cream and nuts and a gently mouth-filling style, with burgeoning ripeness unfurling but nicely underpinned with freshness and preserved-lemon tang on the finish. | 92
Antica Terra Aequorin Willamette Valley Chardonnay 2019 (12.9% ABV)
| 93
AJ | A fuller gold than most: bright mid-gold with gold glints. Classical varietal aromas here, in richly citrusy style, with cream beneath. Pure, fresh, and affable—and some class, too. Give it some time in the glass, and those aromatic notes are amplified. Rich and full, firm and long on the palate; a clear contrast to the flock of rather skinny wines that seem to dominate the tasting. Grand breadth and depth here, with apple and green plum to the fore and little citrus. Vinous, full, forthright. The creamy, leesy notes are subdued but pay dividends in setting off the fruits. You’d want to age this wine for a while; it’s almost a little too masterful at this stage. Excellent and much enjoyed. | 93 AR | Mid-gold in color, this shows the instant appeal of barrel fermentation in aromas that combine stylish, nutty oak with the butteriness of Chardonnay fruit. That buttery texture follows through when you taste, without an overwhelming whack of lactic character but, rather, plenty of intense stone-fruit and nutty flavors, in a dry white
whose texture is nicely defined by convincingly zesty, limey fresh acidity. | 94 DW | Rich and full on both nose and palate: mouth-filling, deep, savory. So much richness but combined with resonance: symphonic, but played with finesse and harmony. Sensuous; deeply enjoyable. | 93
Beaux Frères Willamette Valley Chardonnay 2020 (13.2% ABV)
| 93
AJ | Pale silver-gold, with some green glints. Attractive, developed, and prominent orchard fruits, with a fine oat-flake snow. Seems very much of its place: the misty and autumnal fruits and the green pastoral landscape I associate with Oregon, that’s what the scents here evoke. Vivid and full on the palate, with ample fruited depths: apple and apple skin, pear and quince, a little grapefruit. A felted wealth afterward from its fermentation and the lees from that. Perfumed overall, too, despite the vividness and fruit focus. A truly characterful wine that I can’t quite imagine coming from anywhere else—lovely. The fruits are rather primary at this stage, but the concentration and style are wonderful. | 94 AR | Behind the pale golden hue of this youthful Chardonnay, the aromas are invitingly fresh, with a light kiss of stylish oak. The stone flavors are also fresh and enhanced by the same subthreshold oak, leading to a juicy-textured and full-flavored, well- balanced dry white of some distinction. | 93 DW | Vivacious combination of gentle toast and vibrant acidity; lovely, vivid feel, with plenty of lift and contained concentration. More notes of the orchard, with ripe red apple and some citrus zip. Clean, satisfying, nervy finish. | 91
Lingua Franca Sisters Chardonnay Eola-Amity Hills 2019 (13% ABV)
| 93
AJ | Pale, silver-bright; little true gold here. Misty, restrained aromas; lacking some wealth and creamy finesse. Attractive for all that. Taut, tight, and pungent but not acerbic or shrill. There is some zesty pungency at the end, and fine central-palate quality of fruit. Very much the Chablis end of Oregon, but actually, behind all that restraint it is very good and worth a cellar dalliance. | 92 AR | The almost water-white color might suggest a lack of character but in reality shows the delicacy of cool-climate Chardonnay, because the aromas are not lacking at all, even if the nutty oak and leesy solids are subtly expressed. Following a light spritz on the tongue, the apple and stone-fruit juiciness displays an attractive medium intensity of flavor, thanks to good, supporting cool-climate freshness in a delicately textured dry white of fine precision and quality. | 94 DW | Intensely tangy and mouthwatering, in a ripe grapefruit style. That quality really keeps the mouth focused and engaged, through the subtly smoky-flinty notes on the palate. Punchy, dynamic, highly drinkable. | 93
Adelsheim Staking Claim Chardonnay Chehalem Mountains Willamette Valley 2019 (12.5% ABV)
| 92
AJ | Another pale, silvery 2019, with green glints. Classic, finely crafted aromas; gently citrusy fruits
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