Palate
The crisp acidity and minerality from this cool site are quite apparent in the wine.
Growing Conditions
This is our coolest Chardonnay vineyard, resulting in a wine that's more angular, more soil and mineral driven than fruit driven. This is our second bottling of this new vineyard designation, Platt was planted in 2003 with first crop in 2006; the young-vine production had been going into our Sonoma Coast appellation bottling. By 2009, at seven years of age, the vines were old enough to make a wine of sufficient density and concentration to merit singling out. Planted to the Wente selection collected from one of our Hyde Vineyard blocks, the rows are densely planted (3' and 4' by 6') on low-vigor rootstock (420A). Located five miles from the Pacific off Bodega Highway, midway between Sebastopol and Bodega Bay, the vineyard sits at 800' on a south-facing slope overlooking the Estero Americano (which funnels cooling marine weather to the Sacramento delta via the Petaluma Gap).
Harvest
The Platt Vineyard Chardonnay ripens two weeks later than our Russian River Chardonnays, with a lower pH. We harvested it on October 19th.
Bottling
It was lightly fined with traditional fining agents before being bottled wihout filtration in August 2012.
Winemaking
We use classical Burgundian techniques with the addition of whole cluster pressing of the grapes. All of our Chardonnays go through native yeast fermentation in three-year air dried French and Hungarian oak barrels and then native, delayed malolactic fermentation.
Aging
Our 2010 Platt aged sur lies for 20 months in 64% new oak barrels.
