2024 Aubert - Chardonnay Russian River Eastside (750ml)

Mark Aubert spent the years before founding his own label absorbing lessons from Helen Turley at Peter Michael Winery and later running the cellar at Colgin, experience he carried into the label he and his wife Teresa started in 1999. Robert Parker once suggested it was hard to find finer Chardonnay and Pinot Noir than Aubert's, and that reputation has only grown as the estate expanded from its original Sonoma vineyard into a small collection of named sites. Eastside remains the only Russian River Valley bottling in that lineup, a wine Mark describes as embodying the richness paired with tension that defines the Aubert style.

Perched on a hillside above the Russian River Valley, Eastside grows in unusually rocky, gravelly soil that stresses the vines into small, concentrated clusters. A rare Chardonnay clone was matched to this low vigor site specifically to preserve power without sacrificing elegance, and the grapes are typically the last picked in the Aubert harvest. The wine ferments in French oak with natural malolactic conversion and ages roughly ten to twelve months before bottling.

The 2024 is vivid with lime and lemon zest, tea tree oil, tangerine, and green apple, layered with ripe stone fruit. A gravelly minerality and firm phenolic backbone give it a chiseled, focused structure built to last. Pair it with seared sea bass, grilled prawns, or aged Comté.