Domaine de la Côte
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Few know that Domaine de la Côte's original Juliet Chardonnay planting was higher on the hill—a site that proved to be so steep and rugged, that the vines would never grow to their fullest potential. In 2015, after just two vintages, and at great cost and effort, the team replanted the vineyard on an incline just off the hill’s crest, a seam of fractured diatomaceous shale blanketed in desert sage and artemisia. The vineyard must be farmed entirely by hand—arduous work—but it’s tended with tremendous care and the intent of greatness.
The winemaking is just as considered. The grapes are very lightly crushed—only enough to open the skins—then undergo a long, slow, gentle press. Only the free-run juice is used. It’s briefly settled, then fermented and aged in 500-liter puncheons—a large-format barrel that allows for subtle wood influence while filling out its body while preserving the wine’s energy. After six to eight months, when the wine is deemed ready, it spends another six in stainless steel, where it gains tension and finds its edge.
The 2022 vintage posed a challenge in the form of an intense heat wave around Labor Day. Juliet is typically slow to ripen, so the vines had to endure the fever and recover their stride as cooler temperatures returned. To the team’s delight, they did, and the vines proved they’d rooted deeply enough to find water and sustenance, even in these thin, brittle soils. The wine is proof of the vines and the vintage. It remembers the heat, but transforms it—converting stress into high expression with energy and finesse.
Flavors of dry pineapple, golden apple, and quince are threaded by a vivid, Meyer lemon acidity. Aromatically, those flavors are echoed and gently overlaid with subtle spice and vanilla from the barrel. A mineral grip on the palate and lithe acidity suggest that this wine, like its namesake, has a long and promising path ahead—its youthful components already beginning to coalesce into something more refined.
Juliet (Sashi Moorman’s daughter and the label artist throughout the years) along with the Chardonnay planting itself, embody that luminous moment when sophistication arrives without dimming youthful verve or ambition. Success rarely comes without risk, and both Juliets are encountering formative inflection points. Juliet, the young woman, soon set off for college. The vines, at age seven (in 2022), have reached a stage where their maturity confirms not only a sense of belonging in their site but a drive, even an urgency, to do something profound.
