2018 Eden Rift Vineyards Chardonnay Estate Cienega Valley 750 ml

In 2016, Christian Pillsbury purchased the oldest continuously cultivated vineyard in California. First planted in 1849, this gorgeous site sits in the same chalky badlands that Josh Jensen’s legendary Calera winery made famous. It didn’t take long for word to get out that one of the state’s most storied vineyards was back in business—or for inquiries to start rolling in from luminaries like Raj Parr, the world-famous somm and proprietor of Domaine de la Côte and Evening Land, and 2018 SF Chronicle Winemaker of the Year Ian Brand.

It also didn’t take long for Pillsbury to deliver a showstopper of a wine himself. He hired winemaker Cory Waller—a gifted alum of Soter and Calera—to helm his fledgling winery, and the result is one of the most exciting California Chardonnays we’ve tried in the last decade.

Eden Rift began its life in 1849, when an immigrant from Bordeaux, Theophile Vache, planted this site in the Cienega Valley, near Hollister. Over the next 150 years, this idyllic little mountain canyon of vines changed hands several times. Pillsbury, a San Francisco native and francophile hugely influenced by importing legend Martine Saunier, performed extensive scientific research on the site before purchasing it. After weighing the data, he came to the conclusion that Chardonnay and Pinot Noir would thrive there, and consequently budded the property’s Merlot vines over to those varieties. Before long, sommeliers and winemakers like Parr, Brand, and Chris Miller of Seabold Cellars were asking to buy fruit.

Eden Rift’s vineyards along the San Andreas Fault have significant limestone deposits, like the vineyards in Burgundy’s Côte d’Or, and they give extremely low yields. The result is a wine whose concentration and richness, married to its acidity and structure, make it one of the most thrilling Chardonnays we’ve tried in a long while.

The 2018 vintage delivered ideal conditions across California’s Central Coast—a long, mild growing season with few heat spikes and a late, unhurried harvest that let the grapes build complexity while holding onto their natural acidity. Waller whole-cluster pressed fruit from three blocks, fermented on native yeasts in French oak barrels (18% new), and aged the wine sur lie with weekly bâtonnage through spring—10 months in total before bottling in late August.