Cline Estate Chardonnay 2020
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The Somm
Journal
Product Details
Your Rating
Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
This is a brilliant wine packed full of tropical and stone fruit flavors balanced with oak and vanilla complexity that leads to a long and luscious finish.
Professional Ratings
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The Somm Journal
With top notes of toasty mocha and a peach–vanilla custard middle, this expressive white is layered and complex, over delivering on flavor and texture. It’s also super–food-friendly
Other Vintages
2018-
Tasting
Panel
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James
Suckling
One of the most popular and versatile white wine grapes, Chardonnay offers a wide range of flavors and styles depending on where it is grown and how it is made. While it tends to flourish in most environments, Chardonnay from its Burgundian homeland produces some of the most remarkable and longest lived examples. California produces both oaky, buttery styles and leaner, European-inspired wines. Somm Secret—The Burgundian subregion of Chablis, while typically using older oak barrels, produces a bright style similar to the unoaked style. Anyone who doesn't like oaky Chardonnay would likely enjoy Chablis.
A vast appellation covering Sonoma County’s Pacific coastline, the Sonoma Coast AVA runs all the way from the Mendocino County border, south to the San Pablo Bay. The region can actually be divided into two sections—the actual coastal vineyards, marked by marine soils, cool temperatures and saline ocean breezes—and the warmer, drier vineyards further inland, which are still heavily influenced by the Pacific but not quite with same intensity.
Contained within the appellation are the much smaller Fort Ross-Seaview and Petaluma Gap AVAs.
The Sonoma Coast is highly regarded for elegant Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and, increasingly, cool-climate Syrah. The wines have high acidity, moderate alcohol, firm tannin, and balanced ripeness.