Belle Pente Chardonnay Belle Pente Vyd 07

An Avalon favorite, Brian O'Donnell balances ripe fruit flavors of pear, apple, and white peach with a brilliant crisp minerality and lilting freshness.

Oregon Chardonnay is our best kept secret! Many wineries abandoned it over the past 10 years as they jumped on the Pinot Gris bandwagon but a handful of us stubborn stalwarts persisted. Since 2004, our Chardonnay has been 100% estate grown from our two acre Dijon clone vineyard planted in 1999. This vineyard sits on a steep south-west facing hillside that soaks up the afternoon sun and promotes slow, even ripening.

This 2007 version is a classically styled Chardonnay in the old world tradition. To maintain freshness and acidity, we always harvest a portion of the vineyard early and leave the rest to achieve riper flavors, aromas, and texture. Our standard winemaking protocol includes barrel fermentation with a very small dose of new wood, a 50/50 split between Oregon white oak and French oak, a long, cool fermentation, and sur lie aging. If you've shopped for high end California Chardonnay or good white Burgundy lately, you will quickly realize that this wine is a good value at twice the price! Enjoy now or cellar for a few years. - the winery

Previous Vintage Tasting Notes

2006 Vintage Tasting Notes

Vintage 2006 was very good to our 2 acre estate Chardonnay vineyard. It produced very good ripeness, which translated into a rich, concentrated wine. But there is a fine line in Chardonnay between ripe enough and too ripe, which can make the wines flabby and seemingly sweet. So our standard procedure is to pick the vineyard in two parts, usually 10-14 days apart. The early harvest provides freshness and acidity, and the later one brings richness and viscosity. Barrel fermentation with very modest use of new oak lets the strengths of both pickings show through. If you've shopped for high end California Chardonnay or good white Burgundy lately, you will quickly realize that this wine is a good value at twice the price! Enjoy now or cellar for a few years. - the winery