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| Ratings & Reviews Home |
Excerpt From:
Matt Kramer's New California Wine:
Making Sense of Napa Valley, Sonoma, Central Coast, and Beyond
Published September 2004
Kistler Vineyards— Few small wineries are as dedicated to vineyard-designated wines as Kistler, located high in the Mayacamas Mountains above Sonoma Valley. Founded in 1978, Kistler has in the past decade emerged as one of California's most impressive sources for Chardonnay and, more recently, Pinot Noir.
Choosing among the Kistler Chardonnay offerings is difficult on several levels. First, finding them is a challenge, as the word long ago got out, and the wines are snapped up and squirreled away by the winery's ardent fans, many of whom await word of the latest offerings via a winery mailing list.
Even the generic “Sonoma County” Chardonnay surpasses most offerings. It actually is a blend made from batches from all of the vineyards used in Kistler’s vineyard-designated Chardonnays.
Probably Kistler’s most famous Chardonnay is its Dutton Ranch, which put that brand name (it’s not all one vineyard but a brand name for forty-five separate, noncontiguous sites in Russian River Valley) in lights. Everyone’s Dutton Ranch Chardonnay is different, and you can bet that no one’s is better than Kistler’s in its taut yet honeyed scent and taste.
Carneros Chardonnays arrive through separate bottlings of Hyde Vineyard and Hudson Vineyard. Both are about as good as Carneros Chardonnay gets, conveying both the leanness that is the hallmark of Carneros allied to the richness that Kistler always manages to tease out.
McCrea Vineyard is richer and more full-bodied than any of these. You can feel the great sunshine in the wine, thanks to its Sonoma Mountain AVA location. Not least is Kistler Estate Vineyard, high in the Mayacamas Mountains. It, too, bears a resemblance to another Mayacamas Mountain Chardonnay, namely that from Hanzell. Here again, the winemaking is different, but the underlying structure and delivery of the fruit shares a commonality. It is perhaps the richest and most concentrated of the Kistler Chardonnays.
Yet both Chardonnays jostle for attention and praise: the rich, succulent Kistler Estate Vineyard, Durell Vineyard, and Vine Hill Vineyard, to name but three. There’s also a new (to me) bottling called Les Noisetiers.
Worth noting are Kistler’s Pinot Noirs, which have become increasingly more focused and less intrusively oaky in recent years. Kistler is privileged to get fruit from Flowers’ Camp Meeting Ridge Vineyard and sometimes creates a better Pinot Noir from it than Flowers itself.
In recent years, Kistler has turned in a virtually flawless performance. This is acknowledged, indeed embraced, by its legion of fans. Finding a Kistler wine is almost as challenging as the wines themselves, but Kistler deserves the effort. At the moment, it is probably the source of more Chardonnays of the highest caliber than any other California winery.
COPYRIGHT ©2004-2007 KISTLER VINEYARDS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. LAST UPDATE: 2008-04-18 10:01