Historically cultivated in the Saône-et-Loire, between Dijon and Lyon, and ranging from Burgundy to Champagne, the earliest reliable reference to “Chardonnet” is from the late 1600s. The grape takes its name from the village of Chardonnay in Southern Burgundy. Until the end of the 19^th century, Chardonnay was confused with Pinot Blanc. Surprisingly, DNA testing has shown that Chardonnay is a natural cross between Pinot Noir and Gouais Blanc. While Chardonnay is early budding and relatively easy to grow, it is susceptible to frost and thanks to its thin skin, mildew.

Chardonnay is a particularly transparent grape that can produce very different wines depending on where it is grown. It can be dramatically shaped in the winemaking process by factors like malolactic fermentation and the amount of new oak used during aging. Today, Chardonnay is the great white grape of Burgundy. In fact, it has been the success of the finest white Burgundies from places like Puligny-Montrachet, Meursault, and the Côte-d’Or that has driven the rise of Chardonnay around the world. In France, Chardonnay is also the key grape of Chablis, where it makes mouthwateringly crisp and mineral-driven wines, and in Champagne where it combines with Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier to make the world’s most revered sparkling wines.

From the Old World to the New World

In the 19^th and 20^th centuries, Chardonnay spread its wings and found new homes in North America, South America, and Australia, where its popularity exploded, making it the official go-to white wine for the vast majority of wine drinkers. It is also planted in Italy, Spain, Austria, New Zealand, South Africa, and throughout Eastern Europe and China. Today, Chardonnay is the world’s most widely planted white wine grape.

Chardonnay Comes to America

Historical records show that Chardonnay had arrived in California by the 1800s, when the head of the California Viticulture Commission, Charles Wetmore, imported budwood from Meursault and planted it in his Livermore vineyard. By early the next century, this selection, as well as clonal material brought over by the Wente family, helped to establish a beachhead for Chardonnay in the New World and led to what is now known as the Wente Selection of Chardonnay. Following a similar timeline, clonal material brought to California by Paul Masson became the source for the Martin Ray selection. In the early 1940s, this selection was planted at Mount Eden in the Santa Cruz Mountains. During this formative period for the grape, the Wente and Martin Ray selections were the key source of Chardonnay budwood in California.

In the 1950s, the US Ambassador to Italy, James Zellerbach, founded Hanzell Vineyards, which focused on producing Burgundian-style Chardonnay. In the years that followed, other wineries in California began growing and making Chardonnay, and in 1976, Chateau Montelena’s victory at the famed Judgment of Paris marked a key turning point for the grape in the US. In the years that followed, demand for Chardonnay grew rapidly, as did planting throughout California, and by the 1980s there was more Chardonnay planted in California than in France. In fact, by 2005, Chardonnay planting in California represented 25% of global production. While early California Chardonnays took inspiration from Burgundy, they soon evolved into more opulent and buttery expressions of the grape, with grapes picked riper and at higher Brix, and the use of more new oak. While this style took hold in much of California, especially in the warm climate of Napa Valley, in cooler regions like Sonoma County, Chardonnay pioneers like Steve MacRostie began championing a brighter, more balanced, and sophisticated expression of the grape. Today, there are more than 100 clonal selections of Chardonnay in California.

Stay tuned for The History of MacRostie’s Chardonnay Program.

It’s hard to believe that 2024 is my fourteenth harvest here at MacRostie and my twelfth as a winemaker. Or to put it another way, I’ve been making wine at MacRostie for a third of my life, and I’ve seen many different types of vintages. Each year brings new insights and wisdom-there is always something to learn. The 2024 growing season was an interesting one, and the success of the vintage will be different depending on what type of varietals you work with and what regions you grow them in. As a winery dedicated to Chardonnay and Pinot Noir from cool-climate regions that include the Sonoma Coast, Russian River Valley, Petaluma Gap, Carneros, Redwood Valley, Anderson Valley, and the Santa Lucia Highlands the 2024 growing season was excellent, and I am particularly excited by our Chardonnays.

The vintage started with perfect weather for flowering, producing a bountiful crop of Pinot Noir and historically average yields for Chardonnay. Moderate early summer temperatures with occasional short periods of heat provided ideal conditions for ripening. This was followed by a hot July and mild temperatures throughout most of August. In terms of the timing of the weather in the leadup to harvest, as a Pinot Noir and Chardonnay winemaker, the conditions were great.

There was some heat at the end of August and into September that hurried things along, but just as I started to get stressed about things like tank capacity and dehydration, the weather really cooled off. This gave us an extra two weeks for the Pinot Noir and Chardonnay to recover on the vine, soak up some moisture, finish ripening, and come in at an even and steady pace—with really amazing quality overall! 

Happily, all of our grapes were harvested by October 1^st, which meant that we were able to bring everything in before the big heat wave that hit in October. In fact, we were finished with our Pinot Noir fermentations by the middle of October, and we are currently just wrapping up the primary fermentations for our Chardonnays. While it is still very early to properly assess the characteristics of individual wines, in general terms I am very enthusiastic. Across the board, the wines are clean, aromatic, and elegant, and I am particularly impressed with the phenomenal quality of our Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc.

Because everything was picked before the October heat wave, the grapes arrived in pristine condition, with pure, profound flavors and an electric intensity that promises a standout vintage. While the 2021 vintage remains perhaps my favorite overall vintage for Pinot and Chardonnay, I think our 2024 Chardonnays have the potential to rival even that extraordinary growing season. Of course, only time will tell, and it will be a couple of years until we begin releasing our 2024s. Until then, our 2021, 2022, and soon-to-be-released 2023 wines offer a world of pleasure and discovery.

HEIDI BRIDENHAGEN
Winemaker – MacRostie Winery and Vineyards

The history of winegrowing in Sonoma County goes back more than 200 years, with grapes planted in the region as early as 1812. By the 1920s, driven by European immigrants who brought their viticultural traditions with them, there were more than 250 wineries in Sonoma County. While that number dropped to less than 50 wineries by the end of Prohibition, the region had already established itself as a New World mecca for wine.

In the decades that followed, different parts of Sonoma County earned acclaim for specific grape varietals, and efforts emerged to define different regions within Sonoma County. Building on the region’s reputation for excellence, the Sonoma Coast earned official status as an American Viticulture Area (also known as an AVA or appellation) in 1987. The Sonoma Coast AVA is one of California’s most diverse wine regions. Much like the Napa Valley AVA, which includes 16 sub-AVAs, the Sonoma Coast encompasses nine unique sub-AVAs: Chalk Hill, Fort Ross-Seaview, Green Valley of Russian River Valley, Los Carneros, Northern Sonoma, Sonoma Valley, the Russian River Valley, which is home to our Estate House and our Thale’s Vineyard, and the Petaluma Gap, where we established our Nightwing Estate Vineyard.

Spanning almost half a million acres of land, the Sonoma Coast extends from the border of Mendocino County in the north to San Pablo Bay in the south, and from the windswept Pacific Coast to the rolling hills of Sonoma County’s southeastern dairy lands. While the AVA offers an abundance of microclimates, geology, and soil types, in general, the best Sonoma Coast wines benefit from wind and fog off the Pacific, and the fact that the region consistently receives almost twice the annual rainfall of AVAs that are further inland. These factors generally ensure a long, temperate growing season, which allows for slow, even ripening and acid retention, both of which contribute to the extraordinary quality of our Sonoma Coast wines.

Today, many of North America’s highest-scoring and most celebrated Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays are grown on the Sonoma Coast, with Sonoma County being named the “Wine Region of the Year” by Wine Enthusiast in 2019, and wines from the Sonoma Coast are consistently featured on Wine Spectator’s annual list of the “World’s Top 100 Wines,” including the “2011 Wine of the Year.” The acclaim of the Sonoma Coast AVA has only grown over the past two decades during the Pinot Noir boom that has reshaped the map of California winegrowing. During this time, many wineries like MacRostie that focus on cool-climate Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, as well as winegrowers, have headed ever further west and north to plant new vineyards using the best modern plant material and state-of-the-art viticultural techniques.

Because of its large size and diversity, the Sonoma Coast can produce wines in a range of styles. For Chardonnays from the coolest regions like Green Valley, this can mean sleek, acid-driven wines with zesty citrus flavors and sophisticated minerality. In warmer vineyards, the flavor spectrum can change from citrus to stone fruit to tropical. Pinot Noir can follow a similar spectrum of ripeness from tart red berry and forest floor flavors to more opulent blue and black fruit flavors at warmer sites.

At our Sonoma Winery, Winemaker Heidi Bridenhagen embraces the diversity of the Sonoma Coast vineyards we partner with to create vibrant, beautifully balanced wines with profound aromas and complex, layered flavors. This is certainly true for our 2022 MacRostie Sonoma Coast Chardonnay, which recently earned 93 points from both Wine Enthusiast and The Tasting Panel. Blended using grapes from theSangiacomo and Ricci vineyards in Carneros, and sites farmed by the Dutton and Martinelli families in the Russian River Valley, it combines notes of lemon and stone fruit from Carneros with the acid-driven tension, green apple, and tropical fruit of the Russian River Valley. For the 2022 Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir, Heidi focused on her favorite sub-AVAs for Pinot, notably the Russian River Valley, Carneros, and the Petaluma Gap. From the earth and spice notes of Carneros to the lush fruit of the Russian River Valley to the power and complexity of the Petaluma Gap, each vineyard and region brings something distinctive and compelling to the final wine.

We also explore many single-vineyard expressions of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir from the Sonoma Coast at sites like Walala Vineyard and Wildcat Mountain, as well as from acclaimed sub-AVAs like the Russian River Valley (Kent Ritchie Vineyard, Thale’s, Mirabelle, Klopp Ranch), the Petaluma Gap (Nightwing Vineyard, Gap’s Crown) and Los Carneros (Sangiacomo Vineyard).

While the Sonoma Coast is globally renowned for its wines, it has also earned acclaim as one of the world’s premier destinations for wine tourism and relaxed, down-to-earth hospitality. Sonoma Coast wine country has become a must-visit destination by combining world-class wines, Michelin-starred restaurants, and beautiful hotels with a warm, unpretentious attitude. It is also home to numerous tasting rooms and not-to-be-missed annual wine events like Winter Wineland (January), Taste of Sonoma (June), the Sonoma County Wine Auction (September), and Pinot on the River and Healdsburg Crush (October).

Whatever your taste is in wine, food, and outdoor fun, the Sonoma Coast has it all!