2016 Rivers-Marie Chardonnay Bearwallow Vineyard

From a site owned by Kevin Harvey of Rhys and located in the Anderson Valley, the 2016 Chardonnay Bearwallow Vineyard is another fresh, chiseled, focused white from this estate. More yellow fruits, candied lemons, spice, and floral notes give way to a medium-bodied, lively Chardonnay that has juicy acidity and a great finish. It’s going to benefit from a year or two of bottle age and keep for a decade. 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.