2022 Quandary Vineyard Chardonnay
Yamhill-Carlton AVA
Tasting Note
The 100% Dijon 76 Clone creates an elegant Chardonnay, showcasing beautiful texture, minerality, and spice. There’s plenty of apple fruit, along with apple skins and touches of grapefruit. The finish suggests that further aeration will bring out additional spice and barrel toast on a long and complex finish.
How we make our Chardonnay
Impressed with the Chardonnay fruit coming from the free-draining marine soils found in the hills of the Yamhill-Carlton AVA, we decided to release a small-production vineyard-designate from our neighbors at Quandary Vineyards - just off of Pike Road. The fruit was hand-picked and gently whole-cluster pressed to avoid extracting bitterness from the skins. The juice then made its journey into 130-gallon Puncheon French oak barrels (20% new) to undergo primary and secondary fermentation, with lees stirring during the first six months. During its 9-month elevage in barrel, the wine was never racked.
The 2022 Vintage
A year that kept us guessing, 2022 was an unusual vintage in the northern Willamette Valley. April brought one of our latest snows on record, with growers worried about frost damage. Thankfully, most vineyard sites set a generous crop which after a slow spring required thinning to encourage ripening. Temperatures finally warmed in August and September, but cool nights ensured adequate hangtime and flavor development. A string of sunny October days gave us the final ripening we desperately needed. Nearly every block of fruit was ready over a compressed two-week period, so the fruit arrived at peak ripeness during a very intense harvest season in the cellar. We expect our hard work to be rewarded with complex, fruit-forward wines.