2022 Reeve Wines, Chardonnay, Charles Heintz Vineyard, Sonoma Coast.
I couldn’t not mention how good the Reeve Chardonnays I tasted this last Summer were, especially this pedigreed cru version from the Charles Heintz Vineyard in the cool Sonoma Coast, it is very impressive stuff from Noah Dorrance and with some help the talented Katy Wilson. The Charles Heintz site on classic Goldridge soils was planted to clone 4 in 1982 and have long been a coveted vineyard. This 2022 vintage is, though it was a riper year, is finely balanced and has a lovely tension with stony mineral notes and a zesty citrus kick to go with classic apple pear and tropical fruits. The wine is not overtly reductive, but there’s a touch of flint, hazelnut and wet river rock in the background along with some clove spice, lemon curd, creme brulee and honeysuckle. A touch of toasty wood and yeasty depth add just the right amount of luxury to this beautiful effort, I highly recommend not passing this one up if you are on their mailing list. Reeve is pretty new still, started by the Dorrance’s in 2015, but have a deserved reputation for quality and is a label to put on your watch list, if you haven’t yet tried the wines.
Winemaker Noah Dorrance says that even in a warm year like 2022, the Heintz Chardonnay retained its verve and I was surprised by the restraint and finesse found in this vintage, it came in at 13.8% natural alcohol and there’s an elegant cut of acidity to back the concentration up. Dorrance adds that, with its lively nature it even allowed a fulll malolactic fermentation to soften that energy a touch. The wine, he says, was whole cluster pressed and fermented in a mix of stainless steel, new and used French oak barrels with only 20% of which were new in this vintage. The aging on the Charles Heintz Vineyard Chardonnay was an extended 18 months in the wood, but with no lees stirring and only minimal racking before bottling. The Charles Heintz Vineyard is notably farmed all organic and produces small yields of top notch Chardonnay with mature vines dug deep into these sandy loamy well drained soils. As mentioned, I was very excited by the quality found here on the Reeve Chards and would be amiss not to highlight them, while they are still available. The lineup here at Kelly and Noah Dorrance’s Reeve Wines is quite good at the moment, I really enjoyed their Vermentino, the latest Pinots and Sangiovese bottlings, keep an eye out for them.
($74 Est.) 95 Points, grapelive