2019 Clos Du Val Chardonnay Lot One Carneros Napa Valley 750 ml

Every vintage, winemaker Ted Henry of the legendary Clos du Val estate heads into the cellar to select barrels for “Gran Val,” a spectacular barrel-fermented Chardonnay grown on their cool Carneros estate vineyard. After it’s finally bottled and labeled, Gran Val doesn’t hit retail shops—you can only find it on the Clos du Val website for a cool $55 per bottle. 

We’ve been massive fans of Gran Val for years, and we've been hitting Ted up for it for just as long. But this year, after visiting their cellar in the Stags Leap District, we returned with something even rarer: the 2019 Clos Du Val Chardonnay Lot One, a barrel-fermented Chardonnay that bears the same DNA and vineyard sourcing as Gran Val, but at an incredible price.

Sourced from the same classic Carneros site as their winery-only Chard (with 2% grapes from the prestigious Petaluma Gap AVA), Lot One is a gorgeous, tropical-fruited Chardonnay with beautiful accents of vanilla, clotted cream, allspice, and lilac. Aged for ten months in 25% new French oak, it’s rich and broad on the palate without being too weighty, showing a pleasantly rounded, buttery texture to contrast its lemony crispness. 

Many of you have been collecting Clos du Val’s sleek, fabulously polished Napa Valley wines since the mid-to-late-1970s. Founders John Goelet and Bernard Portet first began searching for vineyard property in Napa Valley in 1970, and after innumerable soil studies, the partners settled on a 150-acre property on the east side of the Valley in the heart of Stags Leap. In 1973—a couple of years before Clos du Val became a household name following the Judgment of Paris tasting—they landed on their Chardonnay site of choice, the cool-climate Gran Val Vineyard in Carneros.

Some 40 years later, under the direction of Chappellet vets Steve Tamburelli and Jon-Mark Chappellet, along with winemaker Ted Henry—a protégé of Dimitri Tchelistcheff (son of legend André Tchelistcheff)—Clos du Val has re-dedicated itself to small-production winemaking focused on the terroir of their magnificent estate vineyards.

The 2019 vintage played right into the hands of Henry and his team as they sought to craft a classic Napa Chardonnay, blending oaky richness with sleek elegance and verve. Over the course of an even, temperate growing season, grapes from Gran Val ripened perfectly, yielding shimmering citrus flavors layered with notes of poached pear and bright yellow apple. 100% barrel fermentation followed by ten months of cellar slumber added intensity and complexity, coaxing clotted cream, buttery richness, lilac, and allspice from luxurious depths. 

The result is a top-flight Chardonnay, true to Clos du Val’s legacy as a Napa original.