Shafer’s Red Shoulder Ranch vineyard in Carneros is home to countless gophers who love to feast on young vine roots. To contain this problem, Shafer erected owl nesting boxes and hawk perches to encourage day and night rodent patrol. The Red-shouldered hawks and other birds of prey do such an outstanding job that the vineyard was named in their honour.

This vineyard offers a long, consistently cool growing season that is ideal for retaining acidity in Chardonnay fruit. Grapes were harvested by hand, then whole cluster pressed. To focus on varietal flavours, Shafer only uses wild yeast for fermentation and does not put the wine through malolactic fermentation. The majority of the wine spends 14 months aging in new French oak barrels. The remainder matures in stainless steel “barrels” (plenty of fine lees contact from the low horizontal profile, but no oak influence).

No matter what time of year you open this wine, you’ll have a taste of summer in Napa Valley. Lush aromatics fill the glass with white flowers, lemon zest, honeysuckle, clove, and flint. There is a rich balance of liveliness and density in the mouth with abundant flavors of apricot, white melon, grapefruit peel, ripe pineapple, and minerality, with a beautiful finish that goes on and on.

“The 2021 Chardonnay Red Shoulder Ranch is another winner that has a slightly fresh, more vibrant style in its lemon and citrus fruits as well as honeyed minerality and spice. Medium-bodied, balanced, and elegant, it’s going to put on weight with a year or two of bottle age and should keep through 2031.” 94 points, Jeb Dunnuck, February 2023