2019 Staglin Family Vineyard Salus Chardonnay Napa Valley 750 ml

We're thrilled to be sharing our first-ever Chardonnay from Staglin: a show-stopping white from one of the First Families of Napa Valley. 

At just $49 per bottle, overflowing with vivid lemon chiffon aromatics and a deliciously rich palate, it’s hard to overstate how much we love this wine, and how rare it is to have even the few cases we got a hold of. In 2018, the winery completely sold out of their Salus Chardonnay in record time, leaving them empty-handed for eight months!

The Salus Chardonnay is the product of a renewed focus on the variety at Staglin, something that is producing some truly miraculous results. The wine is named for the Roman goddess of health and well-being and profits from the wine go entirely to funding brain health research. 

Staglin has long been a powerhouse when it comes to this golden grape variety: Vinous’s Antonio Galloni calls Staglin’s Chardonnay “easily one of the best in Napa Valley” while Jeb Dunnuck has written: “the estate continues to produce a brilliant, high-class Chardonnay well worth seeking out.”

Shimmering gold in color and opening to clean, detailed notes of white nectarine and wet stones, the palate here is round yet contained, showing off a beautifully poised and polished structure. Weighty yet light on its feet, this is a knockout Chardonnay with contours that command your attention right on through to the long, elegant finish.

To get access to this absolutely incredible wine for less than $50 is rare, and 100% the result of our personal relationship with Staglin, whose president, Shannon Staglin, we’ve been happy to call a friend for a decade. If you haven’t had the pleasure of sampling a Staglin Chardonnay in a few years, it’s imperative you revisit it now. Take us up on this offer (while it lasts) at a price that can’t be missed.

Shannon—heir to one of Napa’s most important and iconic Rutherford estates—and Master Sommelier Sur Lucero share something in common: a deep, abiding love of Chardonnay, especially the leaner, crisp, energetic styles.

The two first met in 2010, when she visited the Napa restaurant Oenotri where Sur was working as wine director. Her request for something Chablis-like—in an Italian restaurant, no less—clued him in to where her palate lay. Soon they were connecting over their mutual infatuations for the angular, mineral Chardonnays of Domaine François Raveneau and Vincent Dauvissat, realizing just how simpatico their tastes were.

A few years ago, the two traveled to Europe and drank their way across Burgundy, as Shannon soaked up inspiration. That influence shows in this bottling today: The Chardonnay program at Staglin has become more and more about precision and transparency. The grapes are grown on the coveted soils of the famous Rutherford bench, where the warmer climate and deep, loamy, gravel soils mean that richness and generosity in these wines is practically a given.

But winemaker Fredrik Johansson also started farming the Chardonnay to be more agile, trusting the integrity and concentration of the sites to shine through. His use of up to six types of barrels (including the cigar-shaped type favored by Didier Dagueneau), and judicious amounts of new wood create a complexity that’s expressed in this Salus Chardonnay’s harmonious unity.  

We expect a certain greatness from an estate whose vineyards were developed with the help of legendary Napa viticulturist Andé Tchelistcheff, and whose grapes were once used in Beaulieu Vineyards’ Georges de Latour Private label bottling. For all that pedigree to also now come with a balletic grace and Burgundian finesse—and for just $49 for Wine Access members—should be enough to push anyone over the edge.