Wine Specs
Vintage
2023
Varietal
Chardonnay
Appellation
Willamette Valley
Harvest Date
9/8/23-10/1/23
Alcohol %
13.50
2023 Lingua Franca Avni Chardonnay
Strongly floral notes, hint of cucumber, butter cookies, lemon blossom, peach. The entry is round and soft. Towards the midpalate a more saline note appears, and the wine finishes with a round long flavor of lemon, honeysuckle and sea spray. The vintage rendered an elegant Chardonnay without edges.
Wine Profile
Vineyard Notes
The fruit for 2023 Avni Chardonnay comes from a wide variety of sites in the Willamette Valley, split nearly evenly between the shallow volcanic soils like our Bunker Hill vineyard and uplifted marine sediments as those found on Mt Pisgah and in the Van Duzer corridor.
Production Notes
100% hand-harvested, whole cluster pressed with a single press cut. This juice settles for 48 hours, fermentation begins spontaneously on wild yeast, it is pumped into barrels of varying sizes, with lees stirred once or twice as it finishes primary fermentation. Malo-lactic begins spontaneously, so that all the ferments
have a unique signature. The wine is fermented and aged predominantly in 500, 600, and 3,200-liter casks where it finishes fermentation and ages sur lie for 11 months with a further 3 months in tank before 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.
