Willamette Valley 2021: Chardonnay report and top-scoring wines

On the rise of Oregon Chardonnay, I had a conversation with David Adelsheim, founder of Adelsheim Vineyard and the first chair of the Oregon wine board, about the continuing growth in quality and reputation that has surged over the last decade.

‘Chardonnay isn’t a winemaking technique. It’s a grape,’ he pointed out. ‘In order to make it well, you need winemaking that actually respects the identity of the grape and the variety that you can achieve vintage to vintage.’

Adelsheim advocates for the use of Dijon clones of Chardonnay in the Willamette, where the previously oft-planted ‘selection 108’ from California struggled to ripen.

‘What we’re seeing in the Willamette Valley is a collision of two things; the level of quality possible with careful site and clone selection coupled with a clearer vision of what we can do here. It’s been a gradual recognition over the last ten years or so.’

Scroll down for top-scoring Willamette Valley Chardonnays of the 2021 vintage

In early September, a few days of hot weather pushed some of the Chardonnay sugar levels up. A clutch of producers worried this might create wines with too much ripe fruit, and a lack of freshness, but that simply wasn’t the case.

The wines from the top producers show tremendous balance; there is tension, energy and ripeness. They are among the very best wines made in Oregon’s Willamette Valley for the vintage, showing great balance between energy and richness. Texture, verve and fruit are all of a piece of the top examples from the year. The minerality is finely etched and in the best of these wines, nearly crystalline.

There is ample fruit and, for me, the signature lemon cream, or lemon curd character of Willamette Valley Chardonnay, bears witness to a texture that balances creaminess with the tension of bright fruit.

Simply, the 2021 vintage for Chardonnay in the Willamette is a complete package.

2021 in the Willamette Valley: 5/5

After a particularly challenging 2020, Willamette Valley growers and winemakers were rewarded with a vintage of outstanding quality, with albeit slightly lower yields. The wines up and down the Willamette Valley across varieties show ample ripeness and freshness, and there is plenty of elegance to be had in wines from the top producers.

See all 180 Willamette Valley 2021 tasting notes and scores

Ben Casteel, the winemaker at Bethel Heights, had not seen many Chardonnay vintages like 2021. ‘The 2021 vintage had a flair for the dramatic, with rain coming in during flowering in early June, followed by a nearly three-month stretch without rain and periods of explosive heat,’ he recalls. ‘The crop size was variable depending on the state of the vines during rain, so I anticipated some variation in our pick dates for Chardonnay, but I did not expect the interval from the beginning to the end to be 17 days.

‘We pick our Chardonnay in a fairly tight range in terms of harvest chemistry,’ Casteel continued. ‘I’m a firm believer that if we are going to make wines defined by place, i.e. the limiting conditions defining the vineyard, then our picks shouldn’t vary wildly in measurable ripeness. That means that usually, our picking window is a tidy six to eight days. In 2021 it was double that to achieve the same result.

‘I’ve been very happy to see that with such a broad picking window, where vintage conditions allowed for people to get grapes as ripe as they could have desired, the Willamette Valley as a whole produced some of the most striking and graceful Chardonnays in my memory.’

See the Willamette Valley 2021 score table

Willamette Valley 2021: top five Chardonnays of the vintage:

Bethel Heights, Casteel Estate Chardonnay, Eola-Amity Hills

Walter Scott, X Novo Vineyard Chardonnay, Eola-Amity Hills

Walter Scott, Freedom Hill Vineyard Chardonnay, Mt Pisgah

Cristom, Seven Springs Vineyard Chardonnay, Eola-Amity Hills

Eyrie Vineyards, The Eyrie Chardonnay, Dundee Hills

Willamette Valley 2021 Chardonnay: 20 of the best

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