$64.99 on 6+ bottles (use code: 6saves5)

92pts Vinous
Drinking Window: 2024 – 2030
The 2022 Chardonnay Sojeau Vineyard is understated in the glass, displaying a nuanced blend of honeyed florals, yellow apples, hints of ginger and iodine. Its juicy upon entry, with salty minerals to balance as ripe orchard fruits swirl throughout, all guided by brisk acidity. It leaves a gentle tension to linger through the subtly tannic finale as notes of sour citrus fade.
– ByEric GuidoonMay 2024

The 2022s from Will Hamilton at Violin show just how special this vintage can be from the right sources and in the right hands. In this case, fruit sourced from vineyards that avoided any damage from the spring frost. Together with lower yields and picking earlier for freshness, 2022 resulted in a savory set of well-structured and complex wines. Hamilton didnt have to contend with secondary buds due to frost, or the issue of overabundance that plagued some wineries; he had all of his fruit in before the threat of rain during harvest. This was a truly satisfying portfolio to taste through. The use of new oak is minimal. Balance and purity are front and center, while alcohol levels hover in the 12.5-13% range for Chardonnay and the low 13% range for Pinot Noir. Wine should be delicious, first and foremost. I want to find purity, and Im not a fan of new oak, Hamilton explains. He points out that Two thousand twenty-two wasnt a frost year for us. It was just a really late vintage. Late budding, late flowering and late harvest. Personally, I cant recommend Violin highly enough. The single-vineyard wines are fantastic, but dont pass up the chance to taste the Polk County Cuve, a Pinot Noir that blends fruit from Temperance Hill, Witness Tree, Justice and Sojeau Vineyards with vines that average 25 years old.

Notes from the Vineyard:
The Chardonnay block at Sojeau reaches the bottom of the slope that experienced mild effect from early Aprils frost. Luckily, it was only the lowest lying 10% that saw damage, with those vines still producing a very healthy crop only staggered behind the rest of the block in ripening. We picked the upper vines on September 28th, leaving behind the frost affected plants to pick a week later, keeping the single barrel separate. The wine that makes this blend is from the upper section, blended from a 500L puncheon that was filled directly from the press, balanced by two 228L selections, one new. After a relatively short primary and secondary fermentation, the wines were put to bed on their lees and rested in barrel for nearly 12 months, before a dirty racking (taking all quality lees with it) to stainless steel on September 2nd of 2023. Aging for a further four and half months over harvest, the wines form a more tensile and cohesive structure in their final stage before a gentle filtration prior to late January bottling.

Salty, briny impact up front, leading to ripe melon, honeysuckle, orange peel, and a thread of kiwi green fruit with a confectionary edge. Beautiful complexity, with wonderful lift and aromatic perfume lending a white peach, pollen, and lemon oil savoriness. The attack is well rounded, creamy in the front, with pear, golden apple, and a dense, chewy mid palate. The lower alcohol leaves a more weightless, flightly sense toward the back, showing in only mild glimpses the fattier, toasty barrel elements that provide a tense foil to the lifted and ethereal tones throughout the wine. Pretty, deft, and with delicate charm in 2022.

• 95 cases and 18 magnums produced
• 12.6% alcohol

Our tasting note:
Light straw yellow color. The nose is med+ with apple, floral, saline, savory, nutty. Med body, med acidity, med+ palate intensity fades gently into themed+ finish.