Chardonnay, Mesnil sur blanc, Cuvée 44, Father John W. - 2023

Nicholas Maloney is a true Petit Prince of Pinot Noir, who came up through the ranks in Burgundy and has made some of the most brilliant Pinot Noir wines we've ever seen and drunk from the USA, and more specifically from California.The son of winemakers from Sebastopol, in the heart of the Russian River Valley (a prime temperate zone near the Pacific, home to cult estates such as Kistler, Joseph Phelps, Littorai), he decided to take the plunge after accumulating experience in the great French vineyards. He created his own estate in 2010, buying grapes from small, well-located local winegrowers and scrupulously following his viticultural recommendations, but in the cellar, he reigns supreme, with a tried and tested approach: after manual harvesting, the grapes are macerated at a low temperature and then pumped up to a temperature limited to 25°. They are vatted with a maximum of whole bunches (40 to 100%). The wine is then aged for 11 months on the lees in French oak barrels with 0 to 20% new wood depending on the cuvée and terroir. A single racking is carried out before bottling, which is done without fining or filtration, in the traditional way. Greatly influenced by Burgundy, which he knows so well, he has established a philosophy that each wine produced here should be the purest and most exact reflection of its terroir and vintage. So, having unearthed new great terroirs,...