No Products in the Cart
| Varietal | Chardonnay |
|---|---|
| Vintage | 1995 |
| Rating | 93 RP |
| Bottle Size | 750 ml |
| Bottle Quantity | 1 |
| Country | USA |
| Region | California |
| Location | North Coast |
| Producer | Kistler |
| Color | White |
| Wine Type | Table |
| Rating | 93 RP - 1995 Kistler Vine Hill Vineyard Chardonnay - 93 pts! The 1995 Chardonnay Vine Hill Road Vineyard was tight but unlike the McCrea Vineyard Chardonnay 5-10 minutes of swirling and breathing caused the wine to blossom beautifully. It offers an Acacia flower sweet honeysuckle-scented nose with plenty of concentrated fruit. Full-bodied and well-delineated this appears to be a dazzling complex unfined unfiltered Chardonnay with a provocative stony minerality that provides additional complexity. It should improve for at least a decade. Can anyone think of another winery that produces so many profound Chardonnays? While the production of the single vineyard Chardonnays is small Kistler's total production reaches 18000 cases. All of their marvelous Chardonnays are bottled without any filtration and some without fining. It should be obvious from those comments that Kistler Vineyards is breaking new qualitative ground in view of what they are able to achieve at these production levels.All of the 1995 Chardonnays are as strong as the brilliant line-up of 1994s. Moreover Kistler Chardonnays all possess a complex creamy white Burgundy-like aromatic and textural profile. In fact I find them difficult to pick out as California Chardonnays when inserted in a blind tasting of premier and grand cru white Burgundies. I am in the enviable position of being able to taste all of these wines side by side. While they all possess slightly different styles they share the following characteristics: 1 outstanding purity 2 natural rich textures and 3 a nicely layered mouthfeel. My comments on the 1995s are given in this article in the order in which owner/winemaker Steve Kistler and his assistant Mark Bixler thought I should taste them.Readers having a difficult time finding the Kistler wines should realize that a healthy percentage of the 18000 case production is sold via the winery's direct mailing list with much of the balance going to our country's top restaurants. The winery also tends to release its wines later than others because of their aging potential.Kistler Vineyards is at the pinnacle of the California qualitative pyramid. Particularly admirable is the fact that they got there the hard way - they earned it. RP |
|---|
| Wine Spectator |
|---|
| Burghound |
|---|
| Varietal | Chardonnay |
|---|---|
| Vintage | 1995 |
| Rating | 93 RP |
| Bottle Size | 750 ml |
| Bottle Quantity | 1 |
| Country | USA |
| Region | California |
| Location | North Coast |
| Producer | Kistler |
| Color | White |
| Wine Type | Table |
| Varietal | |
|---|---|
| Vintage | |
| Rating | |
| Bottle Size | |
| Bottle Quantity | |
| Country | |
| Region | |
| Location | |
| Producer | |
| Color | |
| Wine Type |
| Varietal | |
|---|---|
| Vintage | |
| Rating | |
| Barrels |
|
| Style |
|
| Owners |
|
| Region | |
| Location | |
| Producer | |
| Winemaker |
|
| Production |
| Robert Parker Rating |
|---|
| Antonio Galloni Rating |
|---|
| Wine Spectator Rating |
|---|
| Burghound Rating |
|---|
