Sandhi Santa Barbara Chardonnay 2015

"O wella wella wella ohhh, tell me more, tell me more was it love at first sight? Tell me more, tell me more did she put up a fight?" Those lyrics haven't aged well, we hate to start slinging mud around, but we can't imagine there's going to be much of the gang left on the streets when #MeToo hits the T-Birds.

It was however, love at first sight when we met Sandhi, true love that is, not a love dependent upon Olivia Newton John putting on some leathers. This classic, Californian beauty is a pure expression of a new world Chardonnay with bright flavours of citrus fruit, apricot and white peach with a subtle toasty oak character and a long, lingering finish. A true delight to the last rama lama lama ka dinga da dinga dong!"

Sandhi is a small production California winery focusing on select vineyards from the Sta. Rita Hills in Santa Barbara County. Sandhi was founded in 2010 by Rajat Parr, the wine director for Michael Mina Restaurants, and winemaker, Sashi Moorman. The individual vineyards from which these grapes originate–some legendary, some new–have been exhaustively vetted for character, personality, and balance. Employing the wisdom and talents of people who know the vineyards. Sandhi is dedicated to making wines of finesse, minerality, acidity, structure and balance. Wine achieves power and beauty through the seamless integration of these qualities, and this is the inspiration for us. We feel wines exhibiting extreme ripeness, alcohol, oak and other discordant exaggerations cannot truly express a specific vineyards’ terroir.

The wines undergo wild fermentations, there are no additions (except for some sulphur), they all go through malolactic conversion and a conservative amount of new oak is used during elevage. All of this conspires to give wines of incredible minerality and purity that are fully deserving of the plaudits they are receiving.