2022 Dream Field
Chardonnay
The 2022 Dream Field hails from the Peake Ranch in the slightly warmer, eastern end of the Sta. Rita Hills. Peake is immaculately…dare I say… perfectly farmed. When these grapes come in, they almost don’t look real; they look like the plastic fruit that you put on the dining room table as a decoration around Thanksgiving. It’s crazy, you really have hunt and dig to find any imperfections. The result: Chardonnay with laser beam fruit, good acidity and tremendous texture. Drinking Dream Field really is like drinking a dream.
At Peake, this Chardonnay grows on an interesting, atypical, northeast facing hillsides. The soil is a darker loam that has that “Botella” look to it. The vineyard can be seen from Santa Rosa Road, especially when travelling west toward Lompoc. It is the kind of stunning, slightly edgy hillside that makes winemakers melt. When I first saw this vineyard, I thought, ‘Is that thing real’. When I learned that Peake would make some of its fruit available to me, I named it Dream Field.