Tasting Notes: The vineyard shines in this wine, a focused, fresh and fleshy expression of stone, mineral, lemon zest and peel. Rich with well-integrated oak character, the body remains balanced throughout the mid-palate and brings a bite of power and tannin on the finish.

Vineyard: Pioneers in the region, the Bacigalupi family played a key role in putting the California wine industry on the map, selling Chardonnay to Chateau Montelena for the wine that triumphed over top-flight white Burgundy at the 1976 Judgment of Paris tasting. The site benefits from cool air and fog channeled in from the Pacific, as well as the famously unique Goldridge loam soil – eroded volcanic material combined with sandstone and alluvial deposits.

Vintage: The 2019 growing season began with heavy rains in March and April, which cultivated robust cover crops that organically enriched the soil with an abundance of nutrients. With the exception of a brief heat spike in June, summer weather was moderate except for a brief heat spike in mid-August. We harvested the Bacigalupi Vineyard Chardonnay on September 18th under mild conditions to achieve a balance of acidity and bright fruit flavors.

Winemaking: Harvested by hand and whole-cluster pressed, the must settled into a concrete egg tank, where fermentation began spontaneously with wild yeast. While still fermenting, we racked the wine with its lees into French oak barrels – 50% new; 50% neutral – where primary finished and a full malolactic fermentation occurred naturally. The wine aged for 15 months in barrel before it was bottled unfined and unfiltered.