La Crema Willamette Valley Chardonnay 2023
£35.95
The wine
A vibrant and refreshing Chardonnay, with bright notes of lemon, key lime, freshly cut apple and a touch of honeysuckle. Juicy yet richly textured on the palate, with luscious notes of lemon curd, white peach and vanilla through to a long finish.
The Willamette Valley lies several hundred miles north of California in Oregon, at a latitude closer to Burgundy than to Napa, and it is cooler again than the Sonoma Coast. The valley is sheltered from the Pacific by the Coast Range and gets a long, slow autumn, which is why it has become one of the finest addresses for Burgundian varieties outside France.
The producer
La Crema
View all La Crema winesLa Crema was founded in 1979 as La Crema Viñera, meaning the best of the vine. At that point the Russian River Valley had yet to establish itself as one of California's most important addresses for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, and the first few vintages were devoted to learning how cool-climate viticulture worked there.
The winery has focused exclusively on cool appellations ever since, and the range is built to show what the same two grapes do in different places. Monterey is chilled by fog funnelling in from Monterey Bay, the Sonoma Coast by the Pacific directly, and the Willamette Valley in Oregon is cooler again, sitting several hundred miles further north.
That makes the range unusually instructive: six wines, two grapes, three regions, and the differences are all site rather than winemaking. Willamette in particular produces Pinot Noir closer in character to Burgundy than to California.
