Chimney Rock Elevage Blanc 2023
£49.25
The wine
An elegant white, with inviting aromas of fresh peach, apricot and passion fruit layered with hints of jasmine, brioche and caramel. Beautiful minerality on the palate leads to a bright, refreshing finish.
Sauvignon Gris is a pink-skinned mutation of Sauvignon Blanc and a genuine rarity, grown in small quantities in Bordeaux and almost nowhere else. It gives more weight and stone-fruit depth than its parent, and blending the two is a white Bordeaux tradition that very few Napa estates attempt.
The producer
Chimney Rock
View all Chimney Rock winesChimney Rock takes its name from the rock formations on the Palisades behind the winery, which resemble chimney stacks. Hack and Stella Wilson established it in 1980 and made the first estate wine in 1984. The Cape Dutch-style winery followed in the early 1990s, complete with an allegorical frieze of Ganymede, cupbearer to the gods. The Terlato family joined in 2000.
The estate sits in the Stags Leap District, one of the smallest and most celebrated appellations in Napa. It runs for barely three miles along the eastern side of the valley beneath the palisades, and the rock face radiates heat back onto the vineyards through the afternoon while cool air draws up from San Pablo Bay at night. Stags Leap Cabernet is known for a particular texture, softer and more perfumed than Napa's benchmark, often described as an iron fist in a velvet glove.
It was a Stags Leap Cabernet that beat the first growths at the Judgement of Paris in 1976 and changed how the world regarded California.
