2017 Midnight Cellars Chardonnay Estate Willow Creek District Paso Robles 750 ml

Elegant Case-Buy Chardonnay

Meet your new, irresistible house Chardonnay: the creamy, lemon-curd-infused 2017 Midnight Cellars Willow Creek release. Cultivated in the windblown Willow Creek District, this Chardonnay gets its freshness and luscious fruit concentration from Paso Robles’ vast day-to-night temperature shifts, which are some of the most extreme in the Golden State. And Midnight cellars isn’t the only one taking advantage of this incredible terroir, counting prestigious producers like Denner, Linne Calodo, and Saxum as neighbors. 

Founder Robert Hartenberger is a maniac in the vineyard, overseeing every element of the process and drawing on his deep knowledge of the local terrain and weather to guide the vines through each season. 2017 had a curveball up its sleeve, he told us, as a drought ended abruptly with rainfall that replenished moisture in the soil at just the right moment. Cool, even conditions broken up by the occasional heat spike pushed the envelope on ripening, leading to this 2017’s brilliant aromatic profile, packed with exotic fruit richness.

When the Hartenberger family planted 21,000 vines on their 160-acre Paso Robles ranch back in 1996, just a handful of wineries had settled in the area before them. The critical praise that would one day come for the region—“Paso Robles ranks among the most dynamic wine regions anywhere in the world” declared Vinous last fall— was still a long ways off, and Robert and Mary Jane and their winemaker son Richard settled in for the long haul. Some 20 years later, their original investment and decades of sweat equity area paying huge dividends. Thanks to their early pioneer status in Templeton Gap, they were able to lock in a coveted estate vineyard that today is producing some of the best value Chardonnay in California.

Midnight Cellars’ five acres of Chardonnay is planted in shale and limestone-rich soil, a rarity only producers like Calera have leveraged in the past, making Midnight Cellars a unique California Chardonnay. Roots spider as deep as 30 feet underground, investing the wine with terrific mineral sophistication. In the course of a single day, temperatures here can swing as much as 50 degrees, from balmy, sun-soaked afternoons to frosty, toe-numbing evenings. That variation results in grapes with tremendous ripeness and concentration, while brisk maritime winds cleanse and refresh the vines, keeping acidity vibrant.