2006 Chardonnay (Sonoma Coast)

Two thousand five will be the last vintage for David Ramey's Jericho Canyon cabernet sauvignon, as the owners have decided to build a winery of their own and keep all of their fruit. (Ramey had worked with this vineyard since the 1998 vintage, when he was the winemaker for Rudd Estate.) This bottling will be replaced by an as-yet-unnamed proprietary cabernet starting with the 2006 vintage. Ramey does a twice-daily pumpover of his red wines for "maximum color and flavor extraction," and does a total cuvaison of about 21 days, but handles his white wines more gently-he calls it "Champagne-style"-for greater finesse. He also believes that gentle handling allows his chardonnays to develop greater complexity and not simply be fruit bombs. To emphasize his point about the value of holding his chardonnays, Ramey opened a head-spinning 2002 Hyde that offered luscious, smoky citrus and melon flavors and still-youthful tang and grip.