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Wine Details
Price:
Description:
Kongsgaard Napa Valley Chardonnay The Judge is grown on the Kongsgaard family vineyard in the rocky hills immediately east of the town of Napa. Each year the perfect vines, which bear only a tiny amount of golden fruit, are selected for this blend. The crop does not exceed ½ bottle of wine per vine. Robert Parker called this super-concentrated wine "the essence of Chardonnay - one of the most profound Chardonnays made in California." The wine is fermented in all new, Burgundian oak barrels with the indigenous yeast and bacteria requiring six to twelve months to finish the alcoholic and malolactic fermentations. Resting on the primary lees for fifteen months before the first racking, gravity clarifies the wine. This allows bottling without filtration or fining after nearly two years of barrel age. The wine is named after John's late father who was The Judge in Napa County from 1959 to 1985.
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Varietal Definition
Chardonnay:
Chardonnay is by far the most widely planted grape crop in California and dominates California’s cooler, coastal, quality wine regions. The natural varietal ‘taste and smell’ of Chardonnay is surprisingly unfamiliar to many wine drinkers, as its true character is often guised with dominating winemaking signatures. Chardonnay’s rather subdued primary fruit characteristics lean toward the crisp fruitiness of apples, pears and lemon, but the variety’s full body is capable of supporting a host of complementary characteristics, such as oak, butter and vanilla. Regardless of what is the appropriate style for Chardonnay, the varietal continues to dominate vineyard plantings in every corner of the world. Close attention to clonal selection has made this broad geographic and climactic range of Chardonnay viable in thoughtful viticultural hands.
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