2015 Clos Du Val Estate Chardonnay Lot One Carneros Napa Valley 750 ml

Last Call: The First Cherished Bottles

LAST CALL! We introduced this brand new release from Clos du Val and because Wine Access clients depleted our initial allocations, the Napa legend offered up more! But this is it—Clos du Val’s 2015 vintage line-up was deemed “a fabulous set of wines” by Vinous’s Antonio Galloni, who continued: “Production is down and a focus on quality is up….When it comes to the wines there is not much to say except that they are superb.”

The terrifically rich, gold-hued 2015 “Lot One” Chardonnay is a debut effort from an estate that helped vault Napa Valley onto the world stage as part of the 1976 Judgement of Paris. 100 percent barrel-fermented for intensity, made entirely from estate fruit, it represents the cellarmaster’s favorite pick of the magnificent vintage’s barrels. 

We know many of you have been collecting Clos du Val’s sleek, fabulously polished Stags Leap District wines since the mid-to-late-1970s. Bernard Portet and partner John Goelet first began searching for vineyard property in Napa Valley in 1970. After lots of stops and starts and innumerable soil studies, the partners settled on a 150-acre property on the east side of the valley, just off the Silverado Trail—in the heart of Stags Leap.

Some 30 years later, under the direction of Chappellet vets Steve Tamburelli and Jon-Mark Chappellet along with winemaker Ted Henry—a protege of the late Napa legend Dmitri Tchelistcheff (son of André Tchelistcheff )—Clos du Val has re-dedicated itself to small-production winemaking focused on the terroir of their own estate vineyards.

The 2015 vintage played right into the hands of Henry and his team as they sought to put out a classic Napa Chardonnay, blending oaky richness with sleek elegance and verve. Uneven springtime weather dropped yields while drought-conditions and heat kept berry size tiny. Come harvest time, the crop was miniscule but packed with flavor, yielding “rich, powerful, concentrated wines” wrote Jeb Dunnuck, like the 2013s “but with the intensity turned up.”

In a never-before-released cuvée, the Lot One is a cellarmaster blend of the finest barrels meant to capture the essence of 2015, an outstanding example of the concentration, textural complexity, and age-worthy intensity of this extraordinary vintage. Once again, Clos du Val proves its place on top.