Decanter, 95 points: This is clean and sleek, a beautifully balanced medium-bodied Chardonnay with luxuriously ripe stone and orchard fruit. Exotic baking spices complement layers of guava, white peach, and macerated mango with apricot. But what’s most impressive is the intensity and purity of the fruit—so precisely delineated, profoundly spicy, and laser-focused. At $50, this is one of the finest, most balanced, and well-structured Chardonnays from the Russian River Valley at this price point.
Wine Advocate, 95 points: It was barrel-fermented, underwent full malolactic conversion and was matured for 12 months in 10% new French oak barrels. It has open, inviting aromas of stone fruit and pineapple, panna cotta, ginger, toasted brioche and honey. The palate combines concentrated, layered flavors with fireworks of fresh acidity, and it has a very long, perfumed finish.
Wine Spectator, 94 points 'Highly Recommended': Leaps out of the glass with intensity, offering vibrant fruit flavors of crisp Meyer lemon, apple and pear. Aromatic details of tangerine, lime sherbet and lemon blossoms add complexity alongside fresh herbal accents of lemon balm and sweetgrass. Crushed rock minerality lingers on the long, expressive finish. Drink now through 2039.
Comprised of fruit from David Ramey's own estate vineyard as well as a who’s-who of those other Russian River Valley superstar sites, it’s a masterpiece of understatement with a beautifully elegant, silky palate and a mélange of quince, pear, wintergreen, skinned nut and lemon crème brûlée aromatics. David ferments naturally and keeps the new wood on this cuvée dialed back to around 10% so the barrel regimen adds a bit of texture and weight to the wine without any heavy wood tannins or vanilla. But that doesn’t mean it’s light! It’s anything but.
And since we hate touting a wine by telling you what it’s not, the Ramey Russian River Valley Chardonnay is really a beautiful wine that offers up an extraordinary amount of pleasure for a very reasonable price. We know that last year’s 2022 version of this wine was the Wine Spectator #10 ‘Wine of the Year’, but we like the raciness and verve of the 2023 even more.
Our advice is to get some before the press reviews make it hard to get!
