Wine Details
John Kongsgaard and Chardonnay joined forces already in the early 1980s, when John worked at the legendary Napa Valley winery Stony Hill, and later on from 1986 to 1996 at Newton Estate up at Spring Mountain. There, the wild fermented Unfiltered Chardonnay became an eye opener for chardonnays to many consumers. Today Chardonnay is the most important noble grape variety of California, and there’s hundreds and hundreds of chardonnays to be found.
He started his own label in 1996 when working with Fritz Hatton at Arietta, a winery he later on left to focus on his own wines. Nowadays he lives up at Atlas Peak, where he has dug a cave into the mountain at his 61 hectare estate. His regular Napa Valley Chardonnay is very good, but it is always the rare top cuvée The Judge, named in honor to his father, that ranks among the best chardonnays in California. Grapes are sourced from the Stone Crest Vineyard in Coombsville in the cooler southern part of Napa Valley, they are whole bunch pressed and the grape juice is then slowly fermented during several months in new French oak barrels, where the wine will undergo full malolactic fermentation and spend up to two years." (from <a href="http://californiawinereport.blogspot.com/2009/09/judge-2003-from-kongsgaard.html">California Wine Report</a>)