2006 CHARDONNAY
“BIEN NACIDO RESERVE – BLOCK ELEVEN”

This wine is 95% Chardonnay and 5% Roussanne from blocks Eleven and Ten respectively at Bien Nacido Vineyards. These are both custom blocks that were planted exclusively for Qupé in 1997. The Chardonnay block is really hitting its stride in its 10th leaf. The Roussanne was blended in only because we keep running out of this Chardonnay while a lot of people are still trying to figure out what Roussanne is.

The Chardonnay was harvested on September 30th and October 9th at an average of 23.7° brix, 3.22 pH and 9.0 grams acidity (perfect!). The grapes were whole cluster pressed, the juice chilled and settled overnight and then put straight to barrel. We used 2/3 new and 1/3 once-used François Frères Burgundy barrels – mostly Bertranges with a few Allier. The wine went through complete barrel and malolactic fermentation, and was aged on the lees without racking for the first eleven months. It was then racked, fined and cold stabilized, then returned to neutral barrels for another three months. 1280 cases were bottled without filtration in November 2007.

This wine is quite typical of chardonnay from Bien Nacido in a cool vintage. Not as opulent as the 2005 and not as mineral as the 2001, but certainly in a similar vein to both.

My good friend Mel Knox who imports François Frères barrels likes to say, “There’s no such thing as an overoaked wine… there is just underwined oak.” This wine demonstrated what Mel’s talking about. Mostly new barrel, but because of high acidity, low pH and balanced alcohol (13.7%) the wine doesn’t come across as oaky.

This is one of the best chardonnays I’ve made and a great candidate for the cellar.