2022 Michael Mondavi Family Emblem Rodgers Creek Vineyard Chardonnay Petaluma Gap

Michael Mondavi is not Robert Mondavi. Same family. Different company. This label is his.

He co-founded Robert Mondavi Winery with his father in 1966 and made the first eight vintages himself. That included the 1974. He ran the place as CEO, then chairman, until the family sold it to Constellation in 2004. By then he had already started something of his own. In 1999 he and his wife Isabel bought the Animo vineyard on Atlas Peak. Emblem grew out of that.

The Emblem Cabernet is Napa fruit. The Chardonnay is not. It comes from Rodgers Creek, a single vineyard in the Petaluma Gap. That is southern Sonoma, running down toward Marin.

The Gap is a fifteen-mile break in the coast range. Pacific air pours through it every afternoon. When the TTB approved the AVA in December 2017, it drew the line on wind. Boundaries sit where growing-season winds hold at eight miles an hour or better. Not soil. Not a county line. Wind.

Wind slows a vine down. Fruit here comes in ten to fourteen days behind warmer parts of Sonoma. That is hang time without the acid cooking off.

Chardonnay is the minority report here. Three quarters of planted acreage in the Gap is Pinot Noir. Chardonnay runs around thirteen percent. A single-vineyard Gap Chardonnay is a small category.

The cellar work is plain. Whole clusters go to press. Fermentation happens in French oak barrels, a small share of them new.

I would pull it from the fridge twenty minutes before pouring. Cold flattens this style.