2006 CHARDONNAY CLOS PEPE
Santa Rita Hills

For us 2006 was a stellar harvest. There was some variable ripeness because of a slow flowering but that issue was easily solved by careful thinning. Obviously every taster looks for something different, but for us the grapes came in with bright acidity as they did in 2005, and yet they expressed more personality, so we like the wines even better.

This chardonnay always turns out great, and with only half the fruit on the vines compared to 2005, it is one tightly strung and intensely flavored wine. Delicious right now with fish or shellfish, it has the potential to age into a real beauty if you give it eight years or so. All of our Clos Pepe chardonnays are still drinking well, even back to the first one made in 1999, but this year's seems to be our most ageworthy chardonnay to date.

Winemaking wise we continue to barrel ferment and age the wines as in the past; however we are using fewer new barrels in the process--to better show off the distictive Clos Pepe personality. This wine went through the secondary malo-lactic fermentation and remained on its fermentation lees until bottling. It was bottled without filtration.