Perkins-Harter 2022 Eola-Amity Hills Chardonnay, Bracken Vineyard.
The last five-plus years have been a weird hiatus from wine for me: not in the sense that I haven't been drinking it, but with our cellar in what seemed like indefinite detention in a Chicago warehouse, and pandemic purchases piling up, uninventoried, in a basement room, I more or less stopped applying my typical obsessive-compulsive tendencies to things like writing tasting notes, paying attention to vintages, learning about new producers, etc. Now that's all coming back with a vengeance, which also means that I'm reading a lot and stumbling across new-to-me producers I want to try. This was one. Very small production Chardonnay from Eola-Amity Hills, sounded like my kind of thing. And wow; this is really pretty stunning. Pear and apple fruit, white flowers, and the lightest possible honey on the nose; on the palate, this is fabulous (and I don't use that word lightly): concentrated flavor but light on its feet; pleasing minerality and surprisingly persistent, tongue-coating citrus oil; a bit of lime salt on the finish. No new wood. This hits a real sweet spot of seemingly effortless energy, and the play of the delicacy of the wine and the intensity of the flavor just gets me. During these treading-water years, the three US Chardonnays I've consumed most have probably been (various wines from) Enfield, Failla, and Ramey; this is as good as the best of those, and it's its own thing, stylistically, which I immediately really loved. I've ordered more, and this might be my point of entry into a wider exploration of Oregon Chardonnay, too. Should've made the cellar bigger, but the foundation walls were where they were...