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.