Beau Rivage Chenin Blanc 2020

This increasingly impressive Chenin Blanc is drawn from some of Clarksburg’s oldest vines, planted in the 1960s and sourced from a long-term organic grower. William Kelley oversees harvest by hand and makes the wine alongside his friend and partner Frank Ingriselli, who also manages the maturation in California.

The grapes are picked in two lots: those from the sunny side of the vine are crushed to release extract, while fruit from the shadier side was pressed as whole clusters using a very long and firm cycle. The musts then fermented with indigenous yeasts and were raised in eight-year-old, low-toast Burgundy barrels. Kelley uses more and more solids each year, with the wines building texture and drive from their time on lees.

This year the fruit was picked at about the same ripeness as 2019 but the winemakers modified the way they pressed the grapes, to capture brighter acidity. Simply put, the less you break the ‘cake’ of solids during pressing, the lower the pH of the resulting must. This modification means that Kelley can pick several weeks later than in previous years while achieving lower pHs—and thus greater freshness—in the finished wine.

2020 is the most exciting release yet. It’s a tight and chalky white marrying the engaging texture of perfectly ripe Chenin Blanc with lovely clarity, fine-boned texture and crystalline length. A new benchmark for California.