Wine Advocate (Aug. 2007)

The 2006 Tablas Creek Vineyard Antithesis Chardonnay is Tablas Creek's seventh 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 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 2006 vintage was a study of contrasts, with a cold, wet start, a very hot early summer, a cool late summer and a warm, beautiful fall. Ample rainfall in late winter gave the grapevines ample groundwater, and produced relatively generous crop sizes. The relatively cool late-season temperatures resulted in a delayed but unhurried harvest, wines with lower than normal alcohols, strong varietal character, and good acids. The Chardonnay, as usual our earliest-ripening varietal, was harvested in one day on September 14th.

The Chardonnay grapes were whole cluster pressed, and fermented using native yeasts in a mix of neutral oak and stainless steel barrels to preserve the wine's varietal and mineral character. The wine went through full malolactic fermentation in barrel. It was bottled in July 2007.

The 2006 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.