2023 Aperture Cellars Chenin Blanc Soil Specific Clarksburg 750 ml

Long before the judgment of Paris, any serious winery in the Golden State was making bright, lively Chenin Blanc. Today, some of the top wineries in the state are still making Chenin worth going out of the way to find.

Many will tell you that the one to seek out is Chappellet’s $75 bottling off of Pritchard Hill. But for our money, we’ll take Aperture Cellars’ outstanding example. Grown on vines planted way back in the 1940s in Clarksburg, California’s spiritual home of the grape, it’s made by rockstar winemaker Jesse Katz, a wunderkind who’s earned nearly every accolade imaginable.

The 2023 is Jesse’s best edition yet. It earned Wine Spectator Top 100 honors and a blistering 95-point score in the pages of Decanter magazine, who praised it as one of the “most focused expressions of this wine ever.” 

Trained at iconic properties like Petrus, Screaming Eagle, and Viña Cobos, Katz has been a Wine Enthusiast 40 Under 40 Tastemaker, Wine Spectator Rising Star, and was the first winemaker to land on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list. He made wine for the Timberlake-Biel wedding, and shattered records when a six-liter bottle of his 2019 Cabernet sold at an auction for a million dollars.

The proof of his winemaking chops is in wines like the 2023 Aperture Chenin Blanc. Start with finding the vineyard: There aren’t that many Chenin Blanc vines planted in California, let alone full of gnarled old plants that date back to the 1940s. Jesse calls the pick at the perfect time—the grapes are harvested at the perfect ripeness, resulting in a wine balanced on a knife’s edge between bright stone fruit and zippy energy.