Bethel Heights Estate Chardonnay

Chardonnay at bethel heights chardonnay presents the perfect opportunity to experience terroir through a lens other than pinot noir. Six different blocks of chardonnay planted between 1977 and 2001 in various sites around our estate vineyards yield a fascinating diversity of character and style. And yet taken together they are unmistakably bethel heights. The 2014 vintage: this was our warmest vintage on record at bethel heights presenting the possibility of over-wrought wines marked by the character of the growing season and not of the place they are grown. We made a bold potentially risky decision to leave a larger than usual crop on the vines to slow everything down and it paid off with beautiful balanced wines. 2014 was a year when great wine could only be made in the vineyard. Vinification: the fruit was whole-cluster pressed barrel fermented in neutral 500l oak puncheons traditional 228 l barrels and one 3000l foudre (a big oval shaped oak tank). The new wine was a