Napa Valley Chardonnay 2018

Over 40 years ago, Cakebread released its very first wine: a 1973 Napa Valley Chardonnay, and have been fine-tuning it ever since. Grapes for this wine come from the world-famous Carneros appellation in southern Napa Valley. This region sits just north of San Pablo Bay, whose influence provides the cool, windswept conditions that produce Chardonnay with ideal balance between fruit characters and acidity. Soils here are predominantly Haire Loam, a light clay that helps grapevines naturally regulate vigor for fruit of intense concentration. We harvested the grapes by night in small batches, and we press it directly into tank as whole clusters. We then transfer the juice into French oak barrels (87%) and stainless steel tanks (13%) to ferment. In order to achieve maximum fruit expression, we aged the wine on its yeast lees for eight months with intermittent stirring to enhance texture and boost complexity.