Producer: Paul Hobbs — Maison Media

Paul Hobbs Chardonnay Russian River Valley 2020 shows how the sites, vintage and cellar work behind a wine can guide your reading of a review.

The background that matters

Paul Hobbs founded his winery in 1991; its first releases were made from purchased grapes. The winery is based in Sebastopol, in Sonoma County. This 2020 Chardonnay comes from several sites and exposures, with many of the soils derived from weathered sandstone, including the Goldridge series, brown sandy loam and sandy clay.

Read it alongside this wine

The 2020 vintage had a dry winter, then consecutive heat spells and a mid-August lightning storm that brought the start of harvest two weeks earlier than average; picking ran from 3 to 21 September. The grapes were hand-picked at night, whole bunch pressed, fermented in barrel with indigenous yeasts and aged 10 months on the lees in French oak (36% new), with regular stirring. These are production facts for one vintage; on their own they do not tell you how the wine tastes.

Try it with the review

Open the review and sort its observations into three groups: those you would link to barrel and lees work, those you would attribute to the fruit, and those you cannot attribute with confidence. Keep the vintage facts separate from what the review actually reports.

Learning prompts are not guaranteed tasting results; distinguish producer facts from your observations.

Paul Hobbs Chardonnay Russian River Valley 2020