Kistler Vineyards, 'Les Noisetiers' Chardonnay, 2024
Kistler Vineyards, 'Les Noisetiers' Chardonnay, 2024
- 75cl
- 14.2%
- White Still
- Chardonnay
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Optimal drinking window: 2026 - 2033
Est. delivery in 2027
Kistler's 'Les Noisetiers'; the name means 'hazelnut trees', and yes, that's exactly what you get in the glass, is the entry point into their Sonoma Chardonnay range, though 'entry point' flatters most producers at twice the price.
Sourced from the Sonoma Coast, it is fermented in French oak (a portion new) with wild yeasts and aged on its lees, following the Burgundian template that Kistler helped make famous in California back in the 1980s. The result is a wine of real precision: rich enough to feel generous, taut enough to feel alive.
What the critics say:
"The 2024 Chardonnay Les Noisetiers is a total delight. Aromatic and light on its feet, yet also quite expansive, the 2024 has a lot to offer. Citrus confit, hazelnut, white flowers, chamomile and lightly honeyed overtones are beautifully lifted in this super-expressive Chardonnay from various sites in the Russian River Valley."
"Very pale gold. Inviting savoury first impression, neither oaky nor purely fruity, but deep and rich, opening up to a leesy citrus-cream aroma. Excellent balance between fruit and oak with the oak spice and mealy texture in full harmony with ripe but fresh citrus and peach. Rounded in the mouth, medium-bodied and satisfyingly long with a rewarding freshness on the long, gently oaky finish."
Les Noisetiers draws fruit from Kistler's Sonoma Coast holdings, where the vineyards sit at varying elevations above the fog line, exposed to the cooling marine influence that rolls in from the Pacific. The soils are a mix of well-drained sandy loams and fractured sandstone, which keep vine stress in check and lend a mineral, saline quality to the wine. That combination of warmth during the day and sharp, cool nights through the growing season is what gives Sonoma Coast Chardonnay its defining tension between ripeness and freshness.
Sonoma Coast is one of California's most geographically expansive AVAs, stretching roughly 500,000 acres along the Pacific coastline north of San Francisco, though in practice the most celebrated vineyards cluster in the far western reaches near Occidental and Freestone where the fog and wind keep yields modest and acid levels high. It sits in direct contrast to warmer Napa Valley, producing wines of greater tension and less overt weight, and is the spiritual home of Californian Chardonnay producers who look to Burgundy for inspiration rather than to the richer, more opulent styles of the 1990s.
The 2024 growing season in Sonoma County was defined by a wet, generous winter that replenished water tables depleted by years of drought, followed by a mercifully mild summer with none of the scorching heat spikes that have occasionally scrambled ripening in recent years. Harvest arrived at a measured pace, and growers with well-situated sites had the luxury of patience — picking fruit at genuine physiological ripeness rather than racing against the thermometer. That combination of soil moisture and even heat accumulation set up conditions for wines with real structure and freshness in the same glass.
The result is a vintage that rewards variety by variety. Pinot Noir from the Sonoma Coast and Russian River Valley looks particularly promising — precise, with the kind of taut acidity that suggests genuine mid-term cellaring rather than immediate gratification, though the better examples are already drinking well. Chardonnay has texture without being heavy, and Zinfandel from Dry Creek shows focus rather than the jammy excess that warmer years can produce. We'd give the reds two to three years before opening the good stuff, and expect the best to hold until 2032 and beyond.
OUR GROWERS
Kistler
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