Wine Specs
Vintage
2024
Varietal
Chardonnay
Appellation
Eola-Amity Hills
Harvest Date
9/16 & 9/20
Alcohol %
13.00
2024 Lingua Franca Inspiras Chardonnay
New Release
Product on Backorder
Wine Profile
Tasting Notes
Inspiras 2024 tends to be the most intense of our Chardonnay cuvées and in 2024 marries the vastly different qualities of our two estate Chardonnays. The LSV Estate has a creamy, caressing texture while the wind-stressed Bunker Hill adds a sharper, herbal and crystalline mineral profile to the flavor. The complexity, intensity and brilliant layers of flavor of Inspiras 2024 make this another compelling vintage. It enters the palate with quince, papaya, and osmanthus blossom but then ginger, Winesap apple, woodruff and thyme mingle with the long saline finish.. It is fresh, crisp even, but at the same time round and caressing. A scant 137 cases were produced.
Vineyard Notes
This is a wine to contemplate, and it is again, as in 2023, half Lingua Franca Estate, original block, picked on 9/16 and half Bunker Hill block 1, picked 9/20, four days later. The sourcing this year may set a pattern that we can continue.
Production Notes
Hand-picked and whole-cluster pressed, settled for 24 hours in closed stainless-steel tanks, the wine is then barrel fermented with wild yeasts in 22% new, 78% old French 500-liter puncheons from diverse coopers. The wines go through spontaneous malolactic fermentation in their cooperage and are left to age sur lie for 11 months. Finally, the wine is assembled in a closed-top stainless-steel tank with its lees for five months prior to bottling.
Winemaker Notes
2024 has been described as a perfect growing season. Budbreak began in early April and bloom took place third week of June. Early summer temperatures were in the 70s and 80s, with a couple of heat spikes in the high 90s, in July, when these can be beneficial. The temperatures became cooler in September and October, allowing harvest to extend more than a month with each parcel being picked at optimal ripeness and freshness. Picking began the second week of September, and each block could be picked at exactly the right time.
Food Pairing Notes
This Inspiras 2024 could work well with salmon in a tomato-basil broth, a variety of crab and lobster dishes, scallops, prawns in a multitude of preparations including Cantonese dishes, Korean spicy noodles, a range of sashimi and sushi fish such as iwashi, Hamachi, Toro and Maguro, Aji, Saba. Excellent with whole roasted or salt crust sealed fish like Branzino, Coho Salmon or a Steelhead Trout. It would complement caviar, lox, gravlax as well. Age it five years, and have it with fumet de poisson-poached halibut or flounder with white truffles shaved over them. Fresh and soft ripened sheep and goat cheeses, or aged versions of them, with aged Gouda, Parmesan or 18-month aged Comté cheese being an excellent pairing as well.
