2023 Lingua Franca Bunker Hill Chardonnay Willamette Valley

Though crisp and lean on the tongue, Bunker Hill Estate Chardonnay 2023 has a surprisingly floral, marzipan, and mineral nose, but on the palate it is lemon peel, citrus and herbs.  Surprisingly muscular, richly textured and bright with lemon highlights.  The aroma of freshly picked Provençale herbs emerges as the wine opens with aeration. There are layers of flavor in the round, spicy and citrusy finish. The vineyard has yielded a paradox of wonderfully luxurious flavors on the foundation of its usual taught restraint. 

Vineyard Notes:  Bunker Hill is 100% sourced from our Bunker Hill Estate Vineyard in the South Salem Hills and is the oldest source of fruit for any of our wines, having been planted in 1995 to CH76. It is among the earliest of the Dijon-clone plantings in Oregon, situated on the remnant of an 1840s pioneer farm. The soils are quite thin over the basalt bedrock and the slope faces the ocean winds on the west, which makes for thicker skins.

Production Notes:  The grapes were handpicked to maximize freshness and tension in the finished wine. The grapes were 100% whole cluster pressed, settled in tank for 24 hours on average, then barrel fermented with native yeasts in a combination of 23% new, 600-liter puncheons and 77% old French oak barriques and puncheons from diverse coopers. Full malolactic fermentation completed spontaneously in each barrel. After 11 months aging on lees, the wines were combined in tank with their lees for five months prior to bottling.

Winemaker Notes:  The growing season in 2023 started off with a pattern that had prevailed for the previous two years with a cold wet spring, though never with any frost or other extreme event. The cool spring weather led into a beautifully warm second week of May with temperatures in the mid 80s in the Eola-Amity Hills that promoted shoot growth. This set up for a good flowering in June. There were no real extremes of heat this summer but with overall very helpful warm to an occasional hot day throughout the season. Picking began mid- September in good weather and each block could be picked at exactly the right time.