The majority of Liberty School Chardonnay comes from one of the best stretches of Chardonnay country on the Central Coast—two growers in the cool-climate Santa Lucia Highlands, located on the west side of the Salinas Valley in Monterey County. Some of the most acclaimed Chardonnays in California come from that area, and Liberty School’s grapes get, as they should, first-class treatment all the way.

The grapes are picked when their flavors are ripe and before the essential acidity drops too far. Checking the vineyards means driving from Paso Robles up to Monterey at least once or twice a week as harvest nears. Some of the grapes are hand-harvested in the early morning, some by machine at night (which keeps them cooler); all are picked in small enough lots that they can make the 2-hour trip down to the winery and be processed immediately.

The fruit is whole-cluster pressed with a Champagne-style press cycle—low pressure, slow pressing—using custom-built equipment.  The different press fractions (earlier and later in the cycle) are kept separate; all the wine is cold settled for 48 hours to let the solids fall out and emphasize the fruity characters in the wine. Two-thirds of the juice goes into barrels, one-third to tank; the road to fermentation starts at a chilly 35º, slow and gentle.  

Liberty School Chardonnay is not inoculated to produce a malolactic fermentation, which could overwhelm the bright, crisp fruit. To minimize the possibility of an accidental, spontaneous malolactic fermentation, the Chardonnay is kept in a separate barrel room from the reds, and all the barrels are sanitized with ozone before filling to eliminate stray bacteria.

The Chardonnay matures in a 50/50 mix of French and American oak, 10% of it new, for seven to nine months. The final blend is put together and bottled in August, just before the next harvest. The result is a wine full of fruit, full of youth, and unmistakably Chardonnay.