Sandhi Sta. Rita Hills Chardonnay

Sandhi is dedicated to making wines of finesse, minerality, acidity, structure and balance. Wine achieves power and beauty through the seamless integration of these qualities, and this is the inspiration for us. We feel wines exhibiting extreme ripeness, alcohol, oak and other discordant exaggerations cannot truly express a specific vineyards’ terroir. It is because of this focus for balance for why we are so determined to find vineyard sites from the Santa Rita Hills that are old-vine, have cold temperatures, windy exposures, north-facing expositions and clay and diatomaceous soils. From a cellar approach, we go to great lengths to protect the vibrancy, freshness and energy that the Santa Rita Hills fruit delivers. For whites and red we prefer neutral barrel and concrete vessel employing a conservative amount of new French oak. We do not add water, sugar, acid, enzymes and other fixing agents. All wines are wild-yeast fermented. All Chardonnays go through malo-lactic with the lees not stirred. Almost all Pinot Noirs are whole-cluster fermented because we feel the wines smell more alive and have more complex textures than other wines.