2021 Chardonnay Lauren

This recent tasting with Mark Aubert and his team was one of the most remarkable I have had in over a decade of visits. I was deeply impressed not just with the quality of the wines but also with the consistency of what I tasted across multiple vineyards and three vintages. I was not able to stop by Aubert last fall, as the timing of my Napa Valley trip coincided with a very late harvest, so this was my first time tasting the 2022s and the 2021s from bottle. I also took the opportunity to taste the bottled Chardonnays from 2019s, wines I missed because of the pandemic. As readers will see from these notes, the wines are absolutely brilliant.

Mark Aubert got the most out of 2022, a vintage that created numerous challenges for producers, although less so in Sonoma than in Napa. Harvest started in mid-August, 7-10 days earlier than 2021. Most of the fruit was in by the end of the month, although a few sites lingered into mid-September. Ferments were on the longer side, as much as 30 days in some cases. The Pinots were done with fully destemmed fruit. I imagine the 2022s will drink well with minimal cellaring.

The finished 2021 Chardonnays are every bit as special as they were when I tasted them from tank prior to bottling. Wines of energy and site expression, the 2021s clearly have the potential to age. I found the 2019 Chardonnays in great shape. Many Vinous readers have inquired about the 2019s in recent months. I see it as a superb vintage to start delving into. The wines offer notable complexity that has developed since bottling yet remain youthful and full of life. As attractive as the Aubert wines are young, my personal preference is to drink them with a few years of bottle age.

This is a tremendous set of 2021s from Mark Aubert. The Chardonnays, which I tasted from tank prior to bottling, are marvelously precise and nuanced. Every wine is so well-defined. The Pinots might be even more impressive, though, recent changes in farming and winemaking, plus probably some vintage effect, yielded rich and vibrant wines but less heavy and oak-driven than in the past. Aubert describes 2021 as a year with good spring rainfall, no significant heat waves and yields in a normal range of 2.5-3.5 tons per acre. That might sound pretty unexceptional. The wines are anything but.

As has been the case the last few years, I also tasted a few older vintages for a separate report. For now, readers who have access to Aubert Chardonnays from magnum should jump on that opportunity, as the big bottle seems to be especially well suited to these wines, especially at the ten-year-plus stage. Two thousand twenty-one is one of my favorite recent vintages at Aubert.

In addition to tasting the 2021s from tank, I also had a chance to revisit the 2020s from bottle during my most recent visit, which I think is important for understanding the finished wines and something I have been doing here on a regular basis for more than a decade. (I note the bottled 2019s escaped me in the post-Covid return to travel). The bottled 2020s show the limits of the vintage, even in the hands of one of California’s most inspired producers.