2014 Chardonnay Hudson Vineyard

My tasting at Failla was one of the highlights of the two weeks I spent in Sonoma earlier this year. Ehren Jordan's 2014s are superb across the board. The wines are made in a mid-weight style that balances forward fruit with the aromatics and phenolics that these cooler sites tend to confer on their own. The Pinots see around 10-20% whole clusters, which is just enough to give them attractive top notes without being overt. Essentially, theFailla wines truly capture an ideal of what the often-overused term 'balance' is all about. Most of the 2014s were in bottle when I stopped by but a few wines were scheduled to be bottled shortly thereafter. Those wines are scored in brackets. Never one to mince words, Jordan describes 2013 as the biggest crop California has ever seen. Yields were down by around 30% in 2014, which is one of the reasons these wines are so much stronger than the 2013s across the board. Simply put, 2014 is one of the most impressive vintages I have tasted at Failla.