2006 Chardonnay Hyde Vineyard

The key to making successful wines in the long, fairly cool 2006 growing season, said winemaker Andy Smith, was "lots of cluster thinning, or else the crop would run away from you." Smith described this as "pacing the vintage, like you would with a horse. You want a steady gallop, not erratic surges." He also noted that 2006 presented a huge challenge because of botrytis issues, meaning that "a brutal selection process" was required. Smith chooses not to stir the lees of his chardonnays "because my goal is to preserve tension in the wines, and batonnage opens them up more than I want." Says Smith about the set of 2006s he presented: "The chardonnays are unsurprisingly rich, but the pinots have surprised us with their elegance, which is a result of elevated yields. They aren't light, though."

"Here we don't need to worry about getting texture; our concern should be with getting structure," said winemaker Andy Smith, who added that the North Coast produces too many one-dimensional chardonnays and pinots because "with Dijon clones you really need to have a blend, or you're likely to just get simple fruit." When I remarked that I didn't find his wines exactly fruity he responded, "that's a very good thing," adding that it's important to harvest the grapes before they get too ripe: "Hang time is vastly overrated out here; we get plenty of ripeness without even trying." Smith believes that 2005 is a great vintage for vibrant wines. "We could tell early on that the chardonnays were going to have both brightness and structure, but the pinots took a while to show their vivacity."