2021 Cristom Vineyards Chardonnay Seven Springs Vineyard Eola Amity Hills 750 ml

There might not be a single vineyard in Oregon more revered than Seven Springs.

It’s perhaps the quintessential Eola-Amity Hills site: a higher-elevation, east-facing vineyard buffeted by intense evening winds. Grapes ripen sloooowly on its hillside, allowing the Chardonnay planted there to develop a dramatic push-pull between stone fruit and a mineral-driven, zesty energy that drives the wine on the palate. Only a few wineries are allowed access to its fruit.

When you give a legendary winery like Cristom access to that fruit, you get a Chardonnay that Decanter gave a 96-point score and lauded as “revelatory” for its “filigreed elegance”—and named one of the Top Five Chards of the 2021 Willamette Vintage.

Originally planted in the early 80s by local-legend Al Macdonald, who taught viticulture to a generation of winemakers at Chemeketa’s Viticulture and Enology program, Seven Springs provided grapes for some of the greatest Willamette bottlings of the 80s, 90s, and early aughts. 

But in 2007, Evening Land secured an exclusive lease on the property. Access to the site for other wineries dried up, causing a near-riot among local winemakers. It wasn’t until the arrival of Sashi Moorman and Raj Parr in 2014 that Seven Springs fruit was shared again—and even today, only a small handful of other wineries have access to the coveted site.

With dry conditions and low yields, 2021 was a landmark year for Willamette Valley wines. One veteran winemaker told us, “It will certainly rank as one of our top five vintages. It’s certainly a great vintage in the making and I don’t say that lightly.”