94pts Vinous

The 2024 Chardonnay (Sonoma Valley) is really a single-vineyard wine, all from some of the more generous blocks within McCrea. A wine of dimension and class, it offers up an exciting mix of dried orchard fruit, ash, gravel, incense, dried citrus peel, sage and white pepper. The complexity here is just unreal. If there is a hidden gem in the Kistler lineup, this is it!

Winemaker Notes

Kistler Chardonnays are all made from a proprietary California heritage clone, isolated originally from a grand Cru Burgundy vineyard. An intense sense of the mountain heritage of the delicate stone fruit that is lifted, like its McCrea cousin, yet firmer, and with a stronger core and added layers of richness.

All of our eleven vineyard designate Chardonnays are marked first and foremost by regional characteristics. Beyond that lies the personality of each of the vineyards from which they hail. All of the sites are planted to the same clone, a California heritage selection that we have been using for close to thirty years. Each wine is produced in the same fashion, with the focus being on the traditional techniques that elicit the earth driven, complex noble sulfides and resulting minerality inherent in the fruit from each site.