93pts Wine Enthusiast
A beautifully floral nose includes bits of hyacinth and chamomile to go along with ripe pear and tangy ginger notes. The Affinits feels juicy and crisp in the mouth, with its blazing acidity and flavors of guava, chamomile tea, lemon grass and honeycomb. The wine spent 13 months in French oak, 25% new.

92pts Vinous
The 2022 Chardonnay Affinites opens with a perfumed bouquet of white flowers and sweet spices, giving way to peach sorbet. Its soothingly round with a pleasantly bitter tinge, like ripe green apples and gingery spice. The 2022 leaves the palate completely refreshed, finishing salty and mineral with a minty herbaceousness that lingers on. Drinking Window: 2024 – 2028 – ByEric GuidoonMay 2024

The 2022s at Nicolas-Jay Estate are distinctly savory in style and quite youthful, yet they possess a core of bright fruit and tension imparted by lively acidity. I expect them to mature beautifully. The estate lost a significant portion of its Chardonnay production due to the spring frostsaround 60%. Pinot Noir was only down 10-12%. The estate-owned Bishop Creek Vineyard, along with Temperance Hill, turned out some of its most successful wines of the vintage. Frankly speaking, there are no losers in the mix.

From the Vineyard:
The Wine [uh-fin-i-tee] the relationship and connection between different elements. Each vintage our Affinits Chardonnay showcases the brilliance individual sites can produce when masterfully tempered and blended, with the ultimate objective of encapsulating the true spirit of the vintage. Not an individual expression of one site, but rather a composition of shared connections from a special place captured in a moment in time. The chosen vineyards (Spirit Hill, Von Oehsen and Bishop Creek) are interwoven to reveal the delicate flavors and sheer beauty of the Willamette Valley.

Tasting Notes A graceful elegance to this wine visually as it as it moves elegantly around the glass. Immediately there’s freshness and vibrancy on the nose with a burst of Pomelo grapefruit followed by granny-smith apples and chalky tangerine essence. As the wine unwinds further a sweet cinnamon and apricot pulp begin to emerge intertwined with lemon powder, raw honey and crisp green apple. This 2022 version shows more gentle acidity than the 2021 vintage with a soft, free flowing texture of orange blossom liqueur, jasmine tea and stone fruit flavors that twist around a core of white orchard flowers. A beautiful wine on the palate, but not without restraint at this early age and one that will bring further joy with patient cellaring.

Vintage Notes The 2022 vintage was one of the most unique harvests in recent memory. Typical rainfall and winter temperatures kicked off the vintage, but winter was not yet over as temperatures plummeted in April. Bloom resumed, but with this delayed budbreak we found most of our sites not suitably ripe until October had already arrived. But this prolonged hangtime and extended cool evenings of September and October generated compelling and unique acid structures and textures. Chardonnay aromatics are stunning, with river stone chalkiness, grilled peach and pineapple acidity freshness. Medium+ density intertwined with orchard fruits, minerality and toasted grain that make it almost impossible not to parallel these wines with the southern climats of Cte de Beaune.

Harvested: September 30-October 14
Harvest Brix: 22 Cpage: 100% Chardonnay
Cultivation: Organic AVA: Eola-Amity, Yamhill-Carlton
Vine Age: Up to 25 years
Vendange: Hand-picked, 1/8 ton cherry bins, field and winery sorting
Vinification: Spontaneous native yeast in barrel, unfiltered, lightly fined
levage: 13 Months, 25% new French oak
TA: 6.1 g/l p H: 3.22
Date Bottled: April 16, 2024
Cases Produced: 458