Flowers 'Camp Meeting Ridge' Chardonnay Sonoma Coast 2023 750ml

A tangy and fresh wine with intense flavors of sliced apples, lemons and limes. Medium-bodied with very fine phenolics for a Wente clone chardonnay, giving it length and structure. Complex and refined. Minerally, with a botanical character almost like a gin and tonic. Dense on the mid-palate. Drink or hold.

A straw yellow color, the 2023 Chardonnay Camp Meeting Ridge offers more depth on the nose, with more polished notes of baking spice, frangipane, lemon curd, beeswax, and melon. The palate is full-bodied, with a bright and persistent spine of acidity that carves through its more supple ripe texture, it has a mouthwatering, salty finish. It’s tightly wound and needs another 6-12 months in bottle. Drink 2026-2038. For my taste, I would drink the Sonoma Coast bottling over this, but it’s certainly exceptional and impossible to deny.

The 2023 Chardonnay Camp Meeting Ridge is fabulous. Rich, unctuous and layered, the 2023 offers a striking mix of concentration, fruit and coastal energy. Apricot, lemon confit, white flowers and slate all meld together in the glass. This unctuous, oily Chardonnay is a total delight. It was fermented and aged in 500- and 820-liter barrels, 24% new.