The 2019 Chardonnay Santa Cruz Mountains Alesia comes from a blend of sites in the Santa Cruz Mountains. It has a wonderfully textured, medium-bodied, concentrated style carrying ample melon, pineapple, flower, and honeysuckle aromas and flavors. I’d be thrilled to drink a bottle any time over the coming 3-5 years.

Now that the Alesia bottlings from Rhys Vineyards are all made from the younger vine production on their estate vineyards, these wines have moved up a level in overall quality. The 2019 Santa Cruz Mountains chardonnay comes in at a svelte 12.4 percent octane in this vintage and offers up a lovely young nose of pear, green apple, lemon, salty soil tones, dried flowers, citrus peel and a hint of vanillin oak. On the palate the wine is bright, full-bodied, focused and tightly-knit out of the blocks, with a good core, superb mineral drive and focus, zesty acids and a long, nascently complex and very promising finish. This could do with a year or two in the cellar to blossom properly and will be an excellent bottle in due course. 2023-2040.

The 2019 Chardonnay Alesia (Santa Cruz Mountains) is gorgeous. Bright, floral and translucent, the 2019 is impeccably polished from start to finish. Lemon peel, white flowers and crushed rocks give this appellation level Chardonnay tons of class. It is one of the overachievers in this range.