More ripe orchard fruits, toasted nuts, brioche, green almond, and crushed stone-like minerality emerge from the 2019 Chardonnay Hapgood. A focused, medium-bodied, vibrant 2019 with beautiful purity, good acidity, and a clean finish, it too can be drunk today or cellared for 15+ years.

Candied lemons, honeysuckle, crushed stone, and hints of tangerine oil all emerge from the 2019 Chardonnay 3D, one of the richer, more opulent, unctuous Chardonnays in the lineup, yet it never comes across as heavy or over the top. Medium to full-bodied, beautifully textured, and layered, it's already drinking nicely yet should easily keep for at least a decade.

Slightly deeper ruby/plum-hued, the 2019 Pinot Noir 3D offers a wilder, more herbal style in its ripe cherry fruits as well as forest floor, dried herbs, loamy soil, and marine-influenced aromas and flavors. Medium-bodied, vibrant, and lively on the palate, it's another flawlessly balanced, elegant wine from Greg Brewer that does everything right.

The 2019 Chardonnay Bien Nacido Vineyard is also rich but shows slightly more salty minerality and chalky nuances as well as clean, classy citrus fruits, white flowers, and toasted nut-like aromatics. It's beautiful on the palate as well, with a beautiful vibrancy and focus, medium-bodied richness, nicely integrated acidity, and a great finish.

Gorgeous kirsch and framboise fruits as well as spice and dried flower notes all emerge from the 2019 Pinot Noir Sta. Rita Hills. It's a fresher, more elegant example from this great estate, with a solid spine of acidity, beautiful balance, and a great, great finish. It's brilliant today but will be even better with another year of bottle age and keep for at least 10-15 years in cold cellars.

The 2018 Chardonnay Radian Vineyard comes from one of the top sites in the Sta. Rita Hills and was brought up in 30% new French oak. Spiced apple, lemon, brioche, honeysuckle, and hints of toasted almond emerge from the glass, and this beauty is medium to full-bodied, with a rounded, layered texture, beautiful purity, and a great finish. Readers looking for a classic example of Chardonnay from this appellation can't go wrong here.

The 2020 Chardonnay Santa Barbara County comes from the talented Greg Brewer, and it's been an incredible value in every vintage I've been lucky enough to taste. Revealing a medium to lighter gold hue, it's medium-bodied and juicy, with a lively, up-front nose of ripe Meyer lemon, tangerine, honeysuckle, and exotic white flowers. This pure, elegant Chardonnay brings beautiful fruit and texture, has plenty of acidity, and a great finish.

A big step up in price, the 2018 Chardonnay Signature Collection Katherine's Vineyard is similarly gold-hued and offers a beautiful sense of reduction in its ripe stone fruits, peach, and citrus-like aromas and flavors. Rich, medium-bodied, toasty, and mineral-laced, it has plenty of mid-palate depth as well as a great finish.

Lots of mulberry, cherry, and raspberry fruits as well as classic Santa Maria herbal, briny, peppery notes emerge from the 2018 Pinot Noir Signature Collection Barbara's Clone 667. Medium-bodied on the palate, it’s beautifully balanced and has an elegant texture as well as wonderful depth, all with a firm, focused, masculine vibe that should keep for a solid decade.

A ripe, toasty, yet pure, clean Chardonnay, the 2019 Chardonnay Nielson Vineyard, which comes from a site in the Santa Maria Valley, is medium to full-bodied and has a rich, layered textured, plenty of background toasty, nutty oakiness, and a great finish. This rich, satisfying, undeniably delicious Chardonnay should drink well for 3-4 years.

This dark red and clear colored Pinot Noir opens with a pomegranate and red raspberry with notes of cinnamon and clove. On the palate, this wine is light bodied with medium acidity. It is bright and mouthwatering. The flavor profile is juicy ripe red plum and cinnamon blend with note of pomegranate I also detected hints of cocoa dust and maraschino cherry. The finish is dry, and its flavors and gentle mild tannins fade away nicely. This Pinot Noir is delicate and food friendly. I would pair it with cherry amaretto chicken.

Coming from 100% old vine Chenin brought up in barrel, the 2019 Chenin Blanc Jurassic Vineyard reveals a light gold hue to go with classic Chenin ripe citrus and orchard fruits as well as notes of dried herbs and chalky, salty minerality. It's nicely textured, medium-bodied, and balanced, with a clean, dry finish.

The 2019 Syrah Santa Barbara County always shows a cooler climate style, and that's very apparent in the cooler 2019 vintage. Juicy mulberry and blackberry fruits as well as pepper, wildflowers, and foresty, pine-like nuances define the bouquet, and it's medium-bodied, with a pure, elegant texture, silky tannins, and a great finish. It shows more violet and floral notes with time in the glass and benefits from air, so don't be afraid to open bottles ahead of time.

The 2018 Pinot Noir Signature Collection Julia's Vineyard, from the same vineyard, is similar ruby/plum-hued and offers a darker, richer, slightly more inward style in its redcurrant and black cherry fruits as well as forest floor, pine, and sappy herb-like aromas and flavors. It's more structured and has medium-bodied richness, ripe tannins, and a great finish.

The value-priced 2019 Pinot Noir Julia's Vineyard sports a ruby hue as well as an impressive nose of spiced cherries and framboise-like fruits, smoked earth, and toasted spices. Beautifully textured, medium-bodied, and elegant, it tastes as if it cost 2-3 times the price.

Clean white peach, citrus, and toasted bread notes emerge from the 2019 Chardonnay Katherine's Vineyard, a rich, medium-bodied Chardonnay with impressive depth of fruit, solid overall balance, and a clean finish. The quality they're able to achieve in this cuvée given the quantity produced is incredible. This is well worth seeking out and would be a terrific house white to enjoy over the coming year or three.

Stand aside. There’s a freight train of flavour here and while its brakes are hydraulic its momentum is enormous. For the love of grapes. A huge swerve and plum and blackcurrant flavour comes drenched in cedar wood, mocha and vanilla, though its top notes of tobacco and bay shine throughout like the top edge of wave. Will you take a look at the nut-like tannin on this job. This has more texture than a biscuit, more command than a keyboard. It’s sheer old-new-school Aussie red wine brilliance.

Don’t let the pale pink color fool you. This highly rated wine is more of a red wine lover’s rosé. It comes from La Crema, known for its small lot, Burgundian-style chardonnay and pinot noir. The La Crema rosé, which is made from 100% pinot noir and fermented in stainless steel, is made in a rich style that’s bigger in body and complexity than the Diora. It’s a very flavorful wine that’s lightly tannic and tastes of strawberries, watermelon and citrus. It would go well with paella, salmon and chicken.

A nest of cabernet franc.Strong fruit, strong tannin and strong oak. It’s balanced within its own world but this is a heavy hitter. A big serve of resiny vanilla, mint, chocolate, steel and redcurrant, with plum notes drenching the palate. Dry, rusty herbs, the leftovers from a couple of summers ago combine with florals, old too, dried too. Less oak would have been good but this is a wine set up to age. Strong arms, this one. Ropes of tannin territory.

It is always a pleasure to drink an older Napa Cabernet. This one is drinking beautifully today. Deep garnet in color, mostly opaque and bright. The nose is nice with cassis, spice, some tobacco, cherries and slight chocolate. Full bodied. On the palate, this is a bit past prime but offering up a lot. Some fresh fruit (cassis and cherries) along with tobacco and slight funk. Nice finish. Good complexity. This should be consumed sooner than later but all bottles will be unique. It drank great on its own and worked with some soft cheeses.

In the glass this displays a dark and glossy hue, which leads to a complex nose filled with toasted blackberry, liquorice, black olive and vanilla pod, along with some floral elements reminiscent of dried violets, as well as a suggestion of cool crushed chalk. Beautifully poised on the palate, this is very finely textured, bordering on silky, the texture supporting layers of dark fruits, blackberry, olive and currant. It is packed out with ripe and tightly grained tannins which come to prominence in the middle and especially at the end. It is spicy too, certainly energetic, with a thread of pepper, long and charged. This is an exciting wine now, but I think the real joy lies a few years away yet. Give it five more, maybe a few more, to see it at its best The declared alcohol is 14.5%.

Smooth and juicy, with ripe pear and citrus fruit, toasty, rich and balanced, long and amiable, stylish and an interesting wine at an excellent price.

Spicy notes with hints of green fruit, clean, complex, smooth and long, toasted and nicely balanced.

Napa Valley's Top Winemakers on Why You Shouldn't Turn Your Nose Up at Red BlendsChris Carpenter, winemaker for the much-awarded Cardinale Cabernet blend, as well as single-vineyard wines under other widely acclaimed labels, gives the music analogy even more layers in terms of the understanding and skill necessary to make a delicious composite. “Great composers and song writers understand the highs, lows, timber, tonality, dynamics, and rhythm of sound. Flavor has a lot of those same characters, and blending wine for me is a way to bring the individual aspects of the singular wines together. Think of a great orchestra, with its different sections—the brass, the strings, percussion, winds. Each is playing and contributing a unique sound to the overall piece of music. And you as the listener enjoy that for the complexity of sound, the emotion it sparks, the memories it unearths and the shared experience with the audience.” (Pause here, just to appreciate the poetry and metaphorical acrobatics from Carpenter.)“Wine is exactly the same,” he concludes, “except you’re experiencing it as flavor combinations by way of the blending process.” And indeed, the seamless power and complex layers of minerality, dark chocolate, and dark fruit in his 2018 Cardinale Cabernet Sauvignon—which, according to Carpenter, includes 7 appellations and 32 individual wine lots—seem easily capable of inspiring profound emotion and memories.

Aromas of baked berry biscuit and some gentle reductive nuances that add a charcuterie-like edge here. The palate has assertive, driving pomegranate and cherry flavors, as well as a flex of fine tannin that adds depth. Drink or hold.