The History of the Estate Chardonnay
Estate Chardonnay--this wine dates back to our very first vintage in 1986. Up until that time, my family had focused on growing vegetables, an enterprise started by my grandfather in the Arroyo Grande Valley in 1948. Up until the late 1960s, every piece of land that we farmed we was leased. The first parcel that we purchased in 1966 included a beautiful gently sloping hillside that would later turn out to be a great vineyard site called Rosemary’s Vineyard.
My father was a visionary who aside from running a successful vegetable farm was an accomplished pilot, as well as voracious reader who enjoyed cigars and loved wine. By the late 1970s, he was thinking more carefully about what might grow on some of the hillsides immediately adjacent to our vegetable fields. He began planting the vines in 1982, tried his hand at winemaking in 1984 and 1985 and determined that he needed to hire a winemaker. Steve Rasmussen joined Talley Vineyards in 1986 and would serve as winemaker until 2004. My dad’s vision was to make wines that tasted like the grapes he grew, and he believed that estate grown wines were the ultimate expression of quality as a winegrower. The Chardonnay we made in 1986 was the first produced exclusively from the Arroyo Grande Valley, even though this AVA didn’t exist yet.
I joined the business in 1991, after graduating from UC Berkeley and working in a couple of wineshops along the way. I was given the very special opportunity to lead and develop our wine business from the ground up. I was immediately convinced that our way forward was to produce a more classical style that reflected terroir, or the all-encompassing reflection of place. One of the first things I did was to change the style of our Chardonnay to be made in the classic style of Burgundy, where Chardonnay originated. This means that the wines are whole cluster pressed and fermented in French Oak barrels with native yeast where they complete malolactic fermention and age on the lees for 9 months.
Since Eric Johnson became winemaker in 2010, the Estate Chardonnay has continued to evolve and improve as he has refined our winemaking, and now our viticulture. A notable step forward occurred with the introduction of fruit from Oliver’s Vineyard starting in 2020 after the approval of the San Luis Obispo Coast AVA.
Our Estate Chardonnay is truly the signature of Talley Vineyards. This is a great introduction to what we do and I think is a special reflection of the San Luis Obispo Coast, recognized as the coolest AVA in California due to its proximity to the ocean. The defining characteristics of the wine are fresh citrus aromas and flavors with refreshing energy. It pairs especially well with one of our signature crops, avocados, as well as with local seafood like petrale sole.