2021 Letterhead Chardonnay Brown Ranch Vineyard Los Carneros Napa Valley 750 ml

You want the epitome of a boutique, hand-crafted white that you ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT find outside of Napa Valley? This is it. A passion-project sourced from one of the Valley’s great Chardonnay vineyards and crafted by former Crocker & Starr Head Winemaker Evyn Cameron—who also had her hand in multiple 100-point wines when she worked at Cliff Lede—only five barrels (125 cases) ever existed. 

Most of them are earmarked for PRESS, where the wine sells briskly by the glass and the bottle. The rest are exclusively for Wine Access members. 

Brown Ranch is one of the most storied sites for Burgundy varieties in California. Sitting on a hillside bench north of San Pablo Bay at the base of the Mayacamas, it’s located in what’s known as Carneros’s “banana belt”—a slightly warmer microclimate where the fog burns off earlier, giving the vineyards there a longer daily period of warmth than elsewhere in the appellation. 

For years, Brown Ranch belonged to Saintsbury, the Burgundian pioneer of Napa Valley. The site is now owned by the Renteria family, who run one of the most respected vineyard-management companies in Napa Valley. And in the spectacular 2021 vintage, Evyn Cameron was able to secure the best blocks of Chardonnay fruit from this revered site. 

After being handpicked in the cool of the night, Cameron and her team hand-sorted and whole-cluster pressed the Chardonnay, then fermented it in a mixture of new and used French oak barrels. The wine aged sur lie for 10 months, picking up a beautiful creamy texture along the way.