Tanzer's IWC (Nov. 2007)
Wine Advocate (Aug. 2006)

HOW IS IT DRINKING?
Vintage Chart

The 2005 Tablas Creek Vineyard Antithesis Chardonnay is Tablas Creek's sixth bottling of this traditional Burgundian varietal. In the early 1990s, we imported all our Rhone varietal cuttings from France. At the same time, at the request of a Sonoma winery, we imported the hightly regarded small-berry, low-vigor Chardonnay clone named "La Vineuse" and planted 1.5 acres to produce a small amount of bud wood for sale. Three years later, we got our first small crop of Chardonnay.

After tasting the grapes, we thought them so compelling that we made the "Antithesis" Chardonnay our first non-Rhone bottling, as well as our first single-varietal wine. We have continued to produce a small amount (50-250 cases) each year since.

As with all our wines, our Chardonnay grapes were grown on our 120-acre certified organic estate vineyard.

Chardonnay thrives in our chalky clay soils (much like those of Burgundy), and the cool nights in Paso Robles serve to balance the warm, sunny days. We chose a terraced north-east facing blcok above our grapevine nursery for the Chardonnay.

The 2005 vintage was one of nature's lucky breaks, with excellent quality and higher-than-normal yields. The wet winter of '04-'05 gave the grapevines ample groundwater, and a warm period in March got the vines off to an early May flowering. The summer was uniformly sunny but relatively cool, and harvest began (relatively late for us) in the 3rd week of September, giving the grapes nearly a month longer than normal on the vine. The resulting wines were intensely mineral, with good structure and powerful aromatics. The Chardonnay, as usual our earliest-ripening varietal, was harvested in one day on September 23rd.

The Chardonnay grapes were whole cluster pressed, and fermented using native yeasts in 2- to 6-year-old barrels to preserve the wine's varietal and mineral character. The wine went through full malolactic fermentation in barrel. It was bottled in May 2006.

The 2005 Antithesis is intensely Chardonnay in character: pale gold in color, with a nose of lemon, pear, and mineral, a rich palate of spiced pear, citrus and butter, balanced by fresh acidity, and a long, clean finish.