From the oldest vines that Aubert works with, the 2013 Chardonnay Ritchie Vineyard is made from the old Wente clone favored by so many of the top winemakers for Chardonnay. It boasts the wet rocks and candied citrus, the white peach and pineapple notes, has a strong green hue to the light gold color, and a full-bodied, powerful finish. It is a ten-year wine at the minimum.

It sounds like a broken record, but Mark Aubert is certainly one of a handful of California’s finest practitioners of Burgundy-styled, classic California Chardonnays. He’s at the top of the pyramid for these extraordinary wines, and he’s not that far behind when it comes to Burgundian-styled, rich, impressive Pinot Noirs as well. Of course, he has his own winery, and continues to acquire high-quality, cool-climate sites for his Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs, with Cix, Eastside, Lauren Estate and Sugar Shack Estate all now part of Aubert’s estate vineyards. Mark Aubert had an impressive resumé long before he became this famous, mentored by Helen Turley when he was at Peter Michael, and from there spending impressive tenures at Colgin and Tom Futo’s winery before he went off bound for glory. I am a big buyer of these wines every year, and often serve the wines to strangers at charity events. They are consistently the favorites that people taste.
All of Aubert’s wines tend to push about 15% natural alcohol as he is not shy about ripeness, but they also have great acids. They are aged in 100% new oak that is virtually untraceable, given the quality of the fruit and his magical élevage, which produces wines that are pure and precise. His 2012s were probably his most ostentatious and dramatic wines to date, but the 2013s, after a somewhat sluggish tightness when they were first bottled, are now exploding with quality and intensity. His 2014s are among the great, great successes of the vintage. As he told me, 2014 was a tiny crop for him, and all of the wines are slightly bigger than even his 2013s and 2012s, meaning they are in excess of 15% alcohol, but they have intense acid profiles due to the drought and dry soils where his vineyards are planted.

Tel. (707) 942-4333