2016 Rivers-Marie Chardonnay Thieriot Vineyard

The crème of the Chardonnays is the 2016 Chardonnay B. Thieriot Vineyard which comes from a site not far from the Summa Vineyard, far out on the Sonoma Coast. From vines planted in 1990, this tour de force tastes like a Grand Cru white Burgundy with its white, white fruit, white flowers, citrus blossom, and flinty, salty minerality. Deep, concentrated, yet chiseled and focused on the palate, it’s pure class and world-class. Give bottles a year or two and it will keep for 10-15 years. Rivers Marie is the joint project between the husband wife team of Thomas Rivers Brown (of Schrader) and Genevieve Marie Welsh. The label was created in 2002 and includes wines from both Napa and Sonoma. Their Sonoma focus (which is the focus on this report) is on cool climate sites, and the Summa Vineyard, which was purchased by Brown and Welsh in 2010 located far out in the Occidental Ridge region of the Sonoma Coast, can be thought of as the heart of the estate. I tasted four Chardonnays for this report and six different Pinot Noir, all having singular and distinctive characters, which isn’t a given. These are elegant, Burgundian-styled wines that will benefit from short term cellaring, and I suspect be very long lived.