2016 Rivers-Marie Chardonnay Joy Road Vineyard

The 2016 Chardonnay Joy Road Vineyard is another Sonoma Coast release that’s from a tiny half-acre of Goldridge soils and a site farmed by Terry Adams (DuMol also gets Pinot Noir from this site). Brought up in 25% new French oak, it has a terrific flinty mineral component as well as notes of honeycomb, brioche, orange blossom, and subtle tropical fruits. Concentrated, pure, elegant, and beautifully balanced, it’s another terrific Chardonnay from this vintage. 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.