Violin Wines Chardonnay Willamette Valley 2023
Violin Wines Chardonnay Willamette Valley 2023
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91pts Vinous (2022, 2023 NYR)
The 2022 Chardonnay Willamette Valley is perfumed in the glass, revealing a sweetly floral blend of chamomile, Asian pear and white flowers. This is a soft and round effort with ripe orchard fruits and a sensation of liquid stone, giving way to an air of sage toward the close. It finishes youthfully tense, with a bitter lemon-rind tinge and crunchy minerals that linger on. Drinking Window: 2024 - 2030
- By Eric Guido on May 2024
The 2022s from Will Hamilton at Violin show just how special this vintage can be from the right sources and in the right hands. In this case, fruit sourced from vineyards that avoided any damage from the spring frost. Together with lower yields and picking earlier for freshness, 2022 resulted in a savory set of well-structured and complex wines. Hamilton didn’t have to contend with secondary buds due to frost, or the issue of overabundance that plagued some wineries; he had all of his fruit in before the threat of rain during harvest. This was a truly satisfying portfolio to taste through. The use of new oak is minimal. Balance and purity are front and center, while alcohol levels hover in the 12.5-13% range for Chardonnay and the low 13% range for Pinot Noir. “Wine should be delicious, first and foremost. I want to find purity, and I’m not a fan of new oak,” Hamilton explains. He points out that “Two thousand twenty-two wasn’t a frost year for us. It was just a really late vintage. Late budding, late flowering and late harvest.” Personally, I can’t recommend Violin highly enough. The single-vineyard wines are fantastic, but don’t pass up the chance to taste the Polk County Cuvée, a Pinot Noir that blends fruit from Temperance Hill, Witness Tree, Justice and Sojeau Vineyards with vines that average 25 years old.
Notes from Vineyard:
A blend from the same three vineyards as our 2021 version, but with the vast majority coming from the Eola-Amity Hills for the first time. A mix of young vines from the top of Witness Tree Vineyard (40%) and our acre of Sojeau Chardonnay (35%) form the base, with the balance coming from Black Walnut in the Dundee Hills. Half of the blend saw 12 months in barrel before moving to stainless the first week of September, with remaining select barrels of Sojeau aging through late November. The two lots were blended and moved outside for natural cold stabilization through mid January, before a gentle filtration followed by bottling on the 22nd.
Candied citrus fruits, lemon curd, white flowers, all highly aromatic and perfumed. Juicy attack with golden delicious apple, slate, and spiced orchard fruits against a bristling acid core. Purity and focus across the palate, with gentle edges and feathery framework, lending the structure an airy grip and finishing with graceful and elegant weight.
- 195 cases and 12 magnums produced
- 12.8% alcohol
Our tasting note:
Straw yellow and slight green tint. A beautifully aromatic, perfumed nose. Sweet lemons, Amalfi like, green apple, pear, saline and stoney notes, leans into some pineapple and toast. Med body, creamy texture, med acidity, subtle fine textures, the pronounced palate is very persistent, layered and long.
Ambient yeasts start a primary fermentation that lasts between 30 to 50 days, and malolactic within several months. Stirring of lees was limited to primary fermentation and the beginning of ML, but did not occur for the majority of the barrel aging. Barrel aging is 12-14 months in mostly used French oak, 1/3 new.
