2015 Chardonnay

Mount Eden remains a reference point winery for California and the United States. These new releases are compelling. As the case throughout California, 2015 was very early here. "We started picking Chardonnay in the middle of August and were done before the end of the month, Jeffrey Patterson told me. "I have been making wine since 1981. Up until 2013, we had never had an August harvest. Since then, every harvest has started in August," he added. "Yields were down considerably, especially for the Cabernet sauvignon, but overall 2014 was an even smaller crop. Moreover, 2014 was the driest year I have seen here. We got just 14 inches of rain. I have seen years with very little rain, say 20 inches, but nothing like what we saw in 2014. As always, the wines are made in a decidedly hands-off fashion. The estate vineyard is dry farmed, while the wines are fermented with ambient yeasts for both alcoholic and malolactic fermentation, with no acid or water adds, and no fining or filtration at bottling.