2015 Hyde De Villaine De La Guerra Chardonnay Los Carneros 750 ml

Chardonnay Power Duo: The Hyde Family of California, and the de Villaine Family of Burgundy’s Domaine de la Romanée Conti

Today is a very special day, because the 2015 Hyde de Villaine Chardonnay De La Guerra is a very special wine. Hyde de Villaine is a joint venture between two of the greatest wine families in the world—the Hyde family of California, and the de Villaine family of Burgundy’s Domaine de la Romanée Conti. Together, they combine generations of mastery and pedigree with some of the most coveted fruit in Napa Valley to produce singular, world-class wines. The 2015 De La Guerra is right on the money, beaming with golden, green-flecked brilliance in the glass, offering vibrant, juicy pineapple and Anjou pear notes etched with characteristic Hyde Vineyard minerality. 

Aubert de Villaine, co-director of Domaine de Romanée Conti in Burgundy, developed his bond with the Hyde family not through wine, but through love—specifically his marriage to Pamela Fairbanks de Villaine, Larry Hyde’s first cousin. Of course, the joining of two of the world’s most acclaimed winemaking families HAD to result in a few incredible new bottles being made, and so the tiny-production, Hyde de Villaine winery was born.

Founded in 1979, famed Hyde Vineyards is set on gently rolling hills on the Napa side of chilly Carneros. The vineyard blueprint is ingenious, offering each Chardonnay plant optimal southeastern exposure. The soils are poor—meaning vines have to first snake through three feet deep to reach an impenetrable layer of clay subsoil, where they must burrow harder and deeper for nutrients. The vineyard work here is rigorous—each cluster carefully aerated on the vine, providing for succulent, golden berries of luscious juiciness and fine acid backbone.

For years, most of Larry Hyde’s fruit went to the cream of the crop wineries in California—Kistler, Patz & Hall, Paul Hobbs, Ramey—but with the forming of the partnership with de Villaine, Larry Hyde decided to keep a few select blocks back for himself. From an energetic parcel of Calera Chardonnay, the 2015 Hyde De La Guerra bears the unmistakable signature of Hyde Vineyard—intense, lush, mineral—while showing its Burgundian roots in its taught freshness and clear, mouthwatering fruit.