2021 Decathlon Grable Vineyard Chardonnay Knights Valley Sonoma County 750 ml

There are artisan, small-batch, boutique wines—then there’s Artie Johnson’s 2021 Decathlon Chardonnay.

A stunning gem from the man behind Le Artishashic—a staple at more MICHELIN-starred Napa haunts than we can list—it’s a gorgeous, passion-project bottle that will be right at home with the finest white wines in your collection.

We recently caught up with Artie at Auberge du Soleil, overlooking Napa Valley. “Decathlon is a metaphor for the challenges of when you run the business and make the wine—there are very few wineries where that’s done by the same person,” he told us. “I created Decathlon so I could basically have a place where my single-vineyard wines lived, and I could pick certain barrels to leave out of whatever blends I was making. The case counts are really small, they’re barrel selections meant to represent a time and a place.”

This 2021 Decathlon hails from one of the hottest spots for Chardonnay in California. Grable Vineyard sits in Sonoma’s Knights Valley AVA, best known as the home of Peter Michael. Because the owners are friends, Artie gets access to their Dijon and Old Wente clones that grow on 60-year-old vines.

He presses the grapes whole-cluster, ferments the juice in big 500- and 600-liter used puncheons, then ages it sur lie for 10 months to give it a rich texture that beautifully balances the wine’s bright acidity. “The large format keeps the wines tighter, more reductive, lowers the ratio of oak,” Artie explained.

The result, as he calls it, is “a true artisanal project,” with an entire production of just 110 cases. If you ask us, it’s one of the finest Chardonnays you can get your hands on.