Walter Scott - Chardonnay X Novo Vineyard Eola Amity Hills 2022 (750ml)
Price: $102.00
| Producer | Walter Scott |
| Country | USA |
| Region | Oregon |
| Subregion | Willamette Valley |
| Varietal | Chardonnay |
| Vintage | 2022 |
| Sku | 8099 |
| Size | 750ml |
Decanter: 98 Points
A stunning Chardonnay from the X Novo site in the Eola-Amity Hills. X Novo is intentionally diverse 15 clones of Pinot Noir and 20 clones of Chardonnay are intertwined and planted with serious density in this tiny site. Reductive chipped flint notes give way to Hawthorne, briny oyster shell elements, and lemon oil aromas. The palate is well composed—gorgeous layers of smoked citrus grilled ripe pineapple flesh, savoury, and thirst-slaking lemon verbena. A mineral spine looks down on it all. Simply gorgeous. (Drink between 2024-2045)
Jeb Dunnuck: 97 Points
The 2022 Chardonnay X Novo Vineyard pours a bright medium yellow-green hue and in this vintage it?s elegant and harmonious with a ripe perfume of sweet flowers lilac candied lemon and pristine ripe pear fruit. Medium-bodied it fills out the palate with a more rounded feel and has a lovely texture just a hint of citrus oils a delicate almondine clean feel and a lovely long finish with a pretty delicately toasted feel. Its viscosity frames the wine beautifully and I know there's high acidity but it feels so appealing. Drink over the next 10-12 years. 410 cases were produced.
dJohn Gilman: 96 Points
When I was out visiting Erika and Ken at the winery in the summer of 2017, they only
were able to get a portion of the fruit from the X Novo Vineyard. We were tasting the 2015 vintage
at that time, but I was very pleased to hear that from the 2016 vintage, Walter Scott was able to
contract for all of the chardonnay and pinot noir planted at X Novo. The vineyard was planted in
2011 by Craig Williams (long-time winemaker at Joseph Phelps), with a foundation of three feet
of volcanic soils over a base of pure rock. Craig planted the vineyard at a high density of three
thousand vines per acre. In the 2022 vintage, the wine was aged solely in three hundred-fifty and
five hundred liter puncheons, with eighty percent of the casks new. The wine is beautifully refined
aromatically, wafting from the glass in a very complex blend of pear, apple, a touch of casaba
melon, a gorgeously complex base of volcanic minerality, fresh almond, orange blossoms and a
very discreet touch of vanillin oak. On the palate the wine is pure, focused and full, with stunning
depth of fruit, profound mineral drive and grip, a lovely spine of acidity and a very, very long, pure
and complex finish. The densely-planted vines here give this wine an old vine sense of underlying
minerality that belies the fact that they were only eleven years of age in the 2022 vintage. This is
utterly brilliant chardonnay! I would not touch a bottle for four
