2003 Kongsgaard Napa Valley

John Kongsgaard, an F&W Winemaker of the Year in 2004, harvests his Chardonnay from a small, rocky vineyard and basically leaves the wine alone in its barrel, a winemaking practice he likes to call "death and resurrection," which results in this opulent wine layered with notes of hazelnut, apricot and honey.

Fifth-generation Napa natives John and Maggy Kongsgaard produce The Judge, Chardonnay, Roussanne/Viognier, and Syrah. Shy-bearing vineyards and traditional low-intervention winemaking techniques produce powerful, graceful wines -- high intensity expressions of vineyard and variety.

The core of their endeavor is the ten-acre vineyard they planted in the late 1970s on a rocky hilltop in southern Napa Valley which has belonged to the Kongsgaard family since the 1920s. In addition to these family acres, they direct the farming under long-term contract on another seven acres in the Napa Carneros and three acres near St. Helena. The winery, on the eastern rim of Napa Valley, is a cave drilled into the volcanic rock. Production is limited to what they can make with their own hands.

CHARDONNAY NAPA VALLEY is grown primarily on the shy-bearing Kongsgaard family vineyard described above. This vineyard gives the wine its dense, minerally core and extravagant honeyed aroma. Small amounts of wine made from two distinguished Carneros vineyards, Hudson and Hyde, are included in the blend, bringing stone fruit and citrus high-notes to the wine. Like The Judge, the Napa Valley Chardonnay is allowed to ferment in new French barrels without any human intervention other than the weekly stirring by hand – no yeast, no bacteria, no fining, no filtration.