Unoaked Chardonnay 2022

Wine Profile

Chardonnay makes up more than 10% of all vineyard plantings in BC.  Our fruit is sourced from the Dark Horse Vineyard on the Golden Mile Bench. This warm site provides ample heat to fully ripen our Chardonnay while maintaining bright acidity.

On the nose you can expect a melee of pear, white peach, and yellow apple along with notes of beeswax and wet stone. The palate is a mix of lemon meringue, crunchy pear, and green apple. The finish is crisp and long with mineral driven flavors.

Pair this vibrant wine with your favorite shellfish, such as moules marinières.

Winemaking notes

This is our first foray into an unoaked style of Chardonnay and was fermented and aged in Concrete.  The fruit was hand picked and whole cluster pressed and fermented cool in one concrete egg as a single batch over 3 weeks. Partial malolactic fermentation and weekly lees stirring over 5 months helped to add a textural element to the wine.

Vintage notes

The 2022 season kicked off late with a cool start to the season and finished with an amazingly warm and dry fall. The microclimates within the vineyards played a large role in the ripening of different varietals as the right slope and aspect can help collect warmth on the cooler days. Bud break and flowering was delayed by about two weeks with the cool weather, but August and September came through with higher-than-average temperatures which luckily lasted through most of October as well, ensuring that our late-ripening reds matured.

We harvested our first fruit on September 21st for our traditional method sparkling wine, Chardonnay from our Thomas Ranch vineyard in OK Falls. The vines produced close to average yields despite our extra crop thinning efforts to ripen the fruit in what we thought could be a shorter window. The hot and dry weather in October was invaluable, resulting in more intense aromatics in our late ripening whites and reds with concentration and finesse. Expect to see wines with more natural acidity and balance this vintage.

Vineyards

Sourced from Dark Horse Vineyard on the Golden Mile Bench