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.