**Best Price On Line**

(www.winesearcher.com pro version)

(including shipping)

The Wine Advocate - Robert Parker

95 points

"The superb 2007 Chardonnay Richard Dinner Vineyard offers abundant notes of tropical fruits, mangoes, pineapples, orange marmalade, and subtle smoke in a rich, full-bodied, dense style displaying good acidity, fruit, and one of the signs I always look for in high quality Chardonnay, a greenish hue to its light yellow/gold color. This is a big wine that appears to have some tannin."  Robert Parker 2/27/10

"Readers looking for wines packed with flavor as well as personality can do no better than uber-consultant Paul Hobbs’ line-up of Chardonnays, Pinot Noirs, and Syrahs. All of his bottled wines showed even stronger than they did from barrel tastings. All of these Chardonnays spend between 10 and 16 months in barrel, with the percentage of new oak ranging from 80% (for the Cuvee Agustina), 70% (for the Walker Station), and 55-65% for the Ritchie, Ulises Valdez, and Richard Dinner cuvees." Robert Parker

Paul Hobbs’ 2007 Chardonnays are crisp, full-bodied, intensely flavorful wines with higher than usual levels of vibrancy and freshness because of the acid profiles and cool growing season...The 2007 reveals more earth, crushed rock, and tropical fruit (pineapple, orange marmalade, and peach) notes as well as admirable depth, medium to full body, well-integrated smoky oak, and a long finish.
Wine Advocate
 

Winemaker's Notes
The Dinner Vineyard, source of the stunning, opulent chardonnay on which we founded our portfolio, finds dramatic expression with the 2007 vintage. A true 'wow' wine with a lustrous white gold hue, it exhibits lively aromatics of spiced apple, lemon custard and orange blossom. Firmly-structured, viscous and silky, The palate comes alive with well-articulated flavors of pear, dulce de leche and citrus oil. The finish is spicy and nuanced with a seductively smoky minerality. Alcohol 14.6%

The 2007 growing season was preceded by a mild, dry winter. Bud break came early and set a crop of small clusters and highly concentrated berries. Summer brought ideal weather with warm, even temperatures through veraison. Several heat spikes in August anticipated an early start to crush, but temperatures cooled in early September, allowing ample time for phenolics as well as sugars to reach optimum levels. Sonoma Mountain produced wines showing exceptional intensity and vibrant delineation of flavors.

 Richard Dinner Vineyard

Located on Sonoma Mountain, this vineyard exists in large part because of the coyotes and other mountain lions that insisted on hanging around the sheep ranch of the former owners, forcing them to convert the ranch into a vineyard.  We have been enjoying chardonnay from the Richard Dinner Chardonnay since 1991, the inaugural vintage for the winery.