Dalla Vina Chardonnay 07
winery: Dalla Vina
The Terra Vina Chardonnay is a wonderfully rich and complex nose dominated by butterscotch and vanilla aromas. Rich and viscous, this wine is a lovely golden color with faint orange highlights. Tropical fruit and toasty hazelnut flavors are prominently displayed in the long, lingering finish. A perfect match for grilled seafood and lighter red meats.
50% oak aged fruit and 50% stainless steel aged fruit results in a delicious fruit forward Chardonnay. Rich and viscous, this wine exhibits tropical fruit and a long lingering finish. A perfect match for grilled seafood and lighter red meats.
MORE INFORMATION
Made with fruit from Elerding Vineyard's "Six Prong" site in Alderdale, the site is on a bluff overlooking the Columbia River, with chalky soil suited to Bordeaux varietals. "Six Prong" is a comparatively low yield, weather and soil stressed vineyard, producing about 3 tons of fruit per acre.
In production of this wine, the grapes were hand sorted, then lightly crushed and destemmed to break the skins but to not crush the seeds (you don't want to crush the seeds or you get tannins that create undesirable drying and "puckery" tannins in the wine). The wine was open top fermented in 1.5 ton bins after a 3-4 day cold soak. Grapes were cold soaked to get the most essence and flavor from the grape skins. The grapes were innoculated with commercial yeast, and were fermented to dryness in about 10 days at room temperature. The wine was settled in stainless steel tanks for 48 hours, then transferred to 2 year old oak barrels.
The winemaker is not fond of over-oaked wines, he likes tannins and depth of fruit flavor to come from the fruit itself, so he uses 2 year old barrels, which impart much less oak flavor to the wine. The wine was aged in barrel from November 2004 to July 2005, when it was bottled.
