Category	White Wine
Varietal	Chardonnay
Region	California, Central Coast, Santa Cruz Mountains
Brand	Ridge Vineyards

Coming all from the estate Monte Bello Vineyard, the 2018 Chardonnay Estate offers a medium gold hue as well rocking notes of caramelized apples, white flowers, honeysuckle, and crushed rocks. These all carry to a medium-bodied Chardonnay with bright acidity, a focused, chiseled texture, terrific minerality, and just a kiss of background oak. It's going to benefit from 4-5 years of bottle age and have two decades of longevity, if not longer.

Big and powerfully structured, this is loaded with toasty richness to the concentrated mineral and white fruit flavors. Buttery nuances midpalate lead to a long finish that lingers with dried savory hints.

The 2018 Chardonnay Estate Monte Bello Vineyard is a powerhouse on the nose, bursting with baked apples, salted almonds, beeswax, hay and loads of spicy accents. The palate is both silky and pure, concentrated and refreshing, finishing very long with loads of lift and flavor.

The 2018 Chardonnay is classy, translucent and so vivid. Apricot, tangerine oil and light tropical overtones open up first, but the 2018 only starts to show all it has to offer with some aeration. The layers start to fill out, and yet the 2018 never loses its sense of transparency and overall detail. A real sense of phenolic weight gives the wine its distinctive mountain feel.