Kesner 'Bacigalupi' Chardonnay 2013Russian River Valley

This is one of our favorite go-to Chards and the newly released 2013 is even better than the touted 2012 vintage. Coming from the famed Bacigalupi Vineyard (The ’73 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay won at the 1976 Paris Tasting and was sourced from this vineyard), Jason Kesner has produced a rich Chardonnay with both elegance and complexity in the glass. It is for the Chardonnay lover as well as the Chardonnay naysayer and there are very few Chards that can appeal to both camps. We recently used this in a line-up at the tasting room for a private tasting and it did exactly that- it appealed to those that love a great Chardonnay as well as those that don’t typically drink Chardonnay. Notes of honeysuckle and “green and golden orchard fruits threaded with corn silk resonate through the body of the wine, which is luxuriously mouth filling yet poised”. Jason has done an incredible job in the last few years since taking over as winemaker at Kistler but his own Chardonnays are some of the best coming out of California.