Bresa 2021 Chardonnay

Starting with a single barrel in 2019, we wanted to see how a wine from this plot would develop in isolation. The resulting wine has less fruit character and in place a magnified minerality and wild intensity of texture. You can wonder if you are really in California, so pure and salty is the impression. Bresa's name is a reference to Breccia, a sedimentary rock that forms near the source of volcanic events. The mountainous ridge between Sonoma and Napa on which Bald Mountain sits, adjoining the Moon Mountain District where we grow our Cabernet, is a volcanic formation.

We were attracted to Bald Mountain vineyard for the old vine Wente clone that in some parts of the vineyard dates back to the early 1970s. While this vineyard as a whole makes up the majority or all of Myrna, there is one specific are where old vines sit on a rise of almost only fractured basalt with little topsoil, a dramatic site. The resulting wine has less fruit character and in place a magnified minerality and wild intensity of texture.

The structure and almost body of this wine are accentuated by the winemaking approach. As with all our wines, the approach is minimalist, and the work is to accentuate the site's natural characteristics. Minerality and exotic savory characteristics are found on the nose, followed by a palate marked by piercing minerality and sappy viscosity to the texture. The chiseled structure continues on impressively.