To make this wine, I took half of our production of 2023 Mt. Veeder Chardonnay and bottled and already released it to you.

I took the other half and racked it to a stainless steel tank, now filled half full, and allowed it to sit there on its lees for 6 months. The aim was to see the effect of a calm and quiet oxidative elevage on a beautiful but traditional wine that was already at its non-oxidative peak. In a way, you could say that we were trying to translate the effects of Jura sous-voile white wine elevage to a Napa Chardonnay. I have been doing this for 23 years in a somewhat different fashion with our Sylphs wine. Now let's see when we divorce the regime from the Guman vineyard.

The wine is beautiful and strong. It did indeed develop a voile-- a cells-thin veil of surface yeast-- during its secondary, untopped, aging. I go back and forth on the degree to which one can sense the Sherry-like aging regime. I think that it has increased the salinity of the wine, and made longer and more complex its finish. It is still Chardonnay-- but is it Napa? That is much harder to say.