2011 Chardonnay Miya Sta. Rita Hills

As he points out to me each time we taste through his Diatom wines, Greg Brewer is "hoping to capture a specific place and time--as in the vintage--in these wines."As usual, the wines see no oak, "which is the most obvious masking agent," and Brewer likes to use a single fermentation yeast for all of the wines "because wild yeasts are completely unpredictable."He said that while he wants to capture the singular expression of place and year, he isn't willing to give up control by just kicking back and letting the wine run wild."You can call adding yeast intervention but I like to think of it as guidance."

I am a big fan of Greg Brewer and most of his wines, but I have to be honest that I don't get what he is trying to accomplish with Diatom. Brewer says he is going for a pure, minimalist style that emphasizes the unique sites he works with, “like the perfect cut of toro tuna,” he adds. That may be the intention, and it certainly sounds good, but to me the work that is required in the cellar to get these wines into bottle by late March of the year following the harvest is all about intervention, and involves the use of commercial yeasts and sterile filtration, among other things, all of which permit an unusually short élevage. Some readers may find pleasure in the severe austerity of these wines, but I do not.