James Suckling 96 #74 Top 100 2020
"A wonderfully crafted chardonnay with lemon rind, cooked apple, lemon and lemon curd. Mineral and stone character throughout. Its full-bodied, yet vertical and deep on the palate. Takes you down deep and energizes you. Extremely well done. Drink or hold."

Jeb Dunnuck 96
"Starting with the 2018 Chardonnay Estate, which comes all from the estate Hirsch Vineyard in the Fort Ross-Seaview appellation, it was barrel fermented and aged 10 months in barrel followed by two months in tank. It has a Burgundian bouquet of mulled stone fruits, brioche, green almonds, and chalky minerality. Just hitting 13 natural alcohol, it offers medium-bodied richness, a beautiful, layered texture, bright yet integrated acidity, and a great finish. Straight-up classy, its going to evolve positively for 2-4 years and keep for over a decade."

Wine & Spirits 96
"This is among the best Hirsch chardonnays weve tasted, a wine with an ornate, almost baroque complexity woven out of fruit grown on the sandstone ridge along the San Andreas fault. It offers a completely different kind of complexity and depth of flavor than a great BurgundyCalifornia coastal casual, yet precise. If you were to travel to David Hirschs remote vineyard and feel the blast of the Pacific winds against the ridge as you stand alongside the vines he planted in 1994 on a steep, rocky slope facing directly toward the sea, you might begin to sense the pure, terroir-driven nature of this wine. Along with fruit from those 2.5 acres, this wine includes Hirschs younger block of chardonnay, also west-facing, 1.4 acres planted in 2002 on a nearby sandstone hillside. The cool 2018 season produced a chardonnay that defies oxidation, still beautiful a week after it was first opened, destined to thrive for decades. J.G. (610 cases)"

Wine Advocate 92
"The 2018 Chardonnay Estate, from vines planted in 1994, opens with toasted nuts, gunflint, candle smoke and fresh Red Delicious apples with wafts of dried herbs and green tea. The palate is light to medium-bodied with a silky texture and gently nutty character, finishing long, fresh and mineral driven. Lovely! 600 cases were made."

The Wine
With less than 4 acres of Chardonnay vines, production is very limited, and 100 of the fruit is kept for the estate.

The first chardonnay vineyard was planted in 1994. That year, David Hirsch prepared 2.5 acres for planting on a rocky, 40 slope above his house. He was enamored with Barolo and had the crazy idea to put in nebbiolo. Burt Williams, who was buying the pinot noir fruit for his winery Williams Selyem, told David he was nuts and should plant chardonnay instead. Thus the old chardonnay vineyard was born.

The cuttings came from Joe Rochioli. Williams Selyem made the wine from 1997 to 2000; Kistler took the fruit through 2005. In 2002 David planted an additional 1.4 acres of chardonnay on a sandstone hill in field 12, just over the hill from the old vineyard. Together these two tiny vineyards comprise the estate chardonnay, first produced in 2006.
Varietal: 100 Chardonnay
Appellation: Fort Ross Seaview, Sonoma Coast
Alcohol: 13.3
Aging: 100 French oak barrels, of which approx. 10 are new Wine

The Estate
Hirsch is the pioneer vineyard on the True Sonoma Coast. Planted from 1980 by David Hirsch, two miles from the ocean at Ft. Ross (AVA) in Sonoma County, the vineyard first became known from wines of Williams Selyem, Kistler, Littorai, and others. The on-site winery was started in 2002, and winemaker Anthony Filiberti has joined the team to craft some of the most compelling wines of this grand cru quality vineyard. Every effort has been made to integrate the wine making with the farming to produce wines that have site typicity: rich pinot fruit married to a profound acidic complexity finished with deep, evolved natural tannins.

Farming
Biodynamic