Shafer Red Shoulder Ranch Chardonnay 2005
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Robert
Parker
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In a region that offers long, cool growing seasons, 2005 was longer and cooler than most. The picture-perfect summer allowed Shafer to leave the fruit on the vine until it achieved true physiological ripeness, showing off their Carneros Chardonnay fruit at its best. There are lots of layers in your wine glass – aromas and flavors of honeysuckle, Fuji apple, apricot, and exotic flavors of the tropics. The underlying acidity, resulting from their cool-weather vineyard site, is crisply integrated with warm, toasty oak, and the whole package is tied up with a long, mouth-pleasing finish.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The non-malolactic, full-scale Chardonnay, the 2005 Red Shoulder Ranch (around 5,300 cases) reveals beautiful acidity and slightly less wood. (A good percentage of the wine is now aged in steel barrels and then blended back with that percentage which is barrel-fermented and aged in wood.)
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Shafer Vineyards has produced classic Napa Valley wines for more than 40 years.
Shafer’s wines, including its signature Cabernet Sauvignon, Hillside Select, are found in collectors’ cellars and on wine lists in top luxury hotels and restaurants throughout the world.
The vineyard and cellar teams, led by winemaker Elias Fernandez, cultivate more than 200 acres of Shafer-owned vineyards, sources for the winery's celebrated Red Shoulder Ranch Chardonnay, TD-9, One Point Five, Relentless, and Hillside Select.
The winery has a decades-long commitment to sustainability. Beginning in the 1980s Shafer embraced farming techniques that eliminate insecticides and herbicides, and carefully conserve water resources. In 2004 Shafer became the first winery in the U.S. to go 100% solar.
One of the most popular and versatile white wine grapes, Chardonnay offers a wide range of flavors and styles depending on where it is grown and how it is made. While it tends to flourish in most environments, Chardonnay from its Burgundian homeland produces some of the most remarkable and longest lived examples. California produces both oaky, buttery styles and leaner, European-inspired wines. Somm Secret—The Burgundian subregion of Chablis, while typically using older oak barrels, produces a bright style similar to the unoaked style. Anyone who doesn't like oaky Chardonnay would likely enjoy Chablis.
Known for elegant wines that combine power and finesse, Carneros is set in the rolling hills that straddle the southernmost parts of both Sonoma and Napa counties. The cooling winds from the abutting San Pablo Bay, combined with lots of midday California sunshine, create an ideal environment for producing wines with a perfect balance of crisp acidity and well-ripened fruit.
This cooler pocket of California lends itself to growing Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Syrah. Carneros is an important source of sparkling wines made in the style of Champagne as well.