2014 Mail Road 'Mt. Carmel Vineyard' Sta. Rita Hills Chardonnay

We’re pleased to offer the 2014 Mail Road ‘Mt. Carmel Vineyard’ Chardonnay from California’s renowned Sta. Rita Hills AVA—a rare and highly regarded bottling from one of the region’s most compelling vineyard sites. Mail Road Wines was founded by winemaker Matt Dees (of Jonata and The Hilt) and proprietor Sam Marmorstein, with the singular goal of producing Chardonnay and Pinot Noir from the historic Mt. Carmel Vineyard. Planted in 1990 on steep, windswept slopes above the monastery of the same name, Mt. Carmel is dry-farmed and organically tended, yielding wines of extraordinary precision and tension. The 2014 Chardonnay is a beautifully composed wine—layered with lemon curd, crushed seashell, white flowers, and a saline minerality that speaks to the site's diatomaceous earth soils. Aged in mostly neutral French oak, it combines richness and restraint with remarkable energy and length. This is a truly limited-production wine from a vineyard few ever get access to, and it’s drinking at a perfect point now, with several years of graceful evolution still ahead.