cropthreash

 

 

1999 CHARDONNAY BIEN NACIDO
Santa Barbara County
 

This may be our best chardonnay from Bien Nacido to date. Why? The weather was unique in 1999. Mother nature gave us a very small crop of grapes, which were imbued with great intensity of character and unusual richness of flavor. This might have been too much of a good thing, but because of the coolness of the summer weather, the natural acidity of the grapes was also unusually high, and this gave the wine needed balance.

Wine making wise, we did our usual magic, which is to say we did nothing. The wine was fermented and aged in French oak barrels, and not touched until December of 2000, when we decanted off the clear wine and bottled it. After years of winemaking, we have found that the less we do to our wines, the better they express the personality of the spot where they are grown.