Melville Chardonnay

This wine is 100% from our Los Alamos estate and is a combination of clones 4, 76, 95, 96 and selections Mount Eden and Hudson. Like our Sta. Rita Hills vineyard, Verna’s Vineyard also endures very windy conditions and is planted on extremely sandy and porous soils. The main difference between the two ranches is that Verna’s has slightly younger vines and the average daily temperatures are 3 to 7 degrees warmer or colder. We think these slight differences impact the resulting wines by making them more tender and approachable, while maintaining bright acidity that is so indicative of our region. Fruit was harvested by hand, whole cluster pressed, cold settled overnight and transferred by gravity to barrel for fermentation in neutral (5 to 20 year old) French oak barrels, and subsequent sur lie aging without any lees disturbance). Yields were 3.4 lbs/vine (3.1 tons per acre).