Dutton Goldfield - Rued Vineyard Chardonnay2015

WHITE WINE

Estate

Dutton-Goldfield’s mission is to craft world-class wines that express the personalities of their cool-climate home, through a brightness of fruit, complexity, structure and balance. The winery was born of a handshake in a vineyard in 1998, when longtime colleagues and friends Steve Dutton and Dan Goldfield recognized this shared vision.

Tasting notes

Explosive apple, Asian pear, and lemon/lime fruit are interlaced with gardenia and lemon blossom in the nose. The mouth is decadently creamy, with lychee and orchard fruit compote kept lively by a core of focused citrus. The wine finishes with a wonderful combination of brightness and richness, like a lemon cake with butter brickle ice cream on the side.

Vinification

The exceptional fruit from this old vineyard enables the winemaker to pull out all the stops and still produce a wine of great structure and fruit focus. Rued is 100% barrel fermented and undergoes full malolactic fermentation. A large portion of the barrels are fermented using native yeast for richness and complexity, while some are inoculated with cultured strains that showcase the floral aromatics of the clone. The blend for this wine was barrel selected in April 2018, blended along with the primary yeast lees, and then sent back to barrel until bottling in May of 2019. For this special wine our signature barrel blend combines the fresh ginger and high-toned spice of Seguin Moreau Premium barrels, the structure and richness imparted by Taransaud, and a touch of Fouquet's ebullience. With the great solidity and concentration of this fruit, long barrel aging elicits a wonderful combination of lushness and complexity in the wine. 100% barrel fermentation, 100% malolactic fermentation, bottled unfiltered, stirred lees.