In the glass: JL Wood Chardonnays
A specialist winery in Monterey County makes top-notch Chard
A California winery that uses only one grape variety seems like an “eggs in one basket” kind of operation. As Kermit Lynch is fond of saying (and I paraphrase), “Never a white without a red to follow, and never a red without a white before.” (Except maybe on weeknights?)
But that’s JL Wood Wine, a boutique producer in the Arroyo Seco AVA of Monterey County, California. This is prime Chardonnay territory, on lighter, sandier soils at low altitude between the Santa Lucia Highlands and the Gabilan mountain range. And JL Wood only makes Chardonnay.
Owners Carol and Paul Morrison tend a ranch and 125-acre vineyard planted entirely to two clones of Chardonnay by Carol’s father, JL Wood. For years they sold the grapes to several big Chardonnay labels (you can use your imagination here), and in 2020 they decided to produce some under their own label. Total production is less than 3,000 cases a year and sales currently are only through the JL Wood website.
To call JL Wood a “boutique” producer, as I did above, just means small. These wines don’t come with the pretension of a garagiste or young-buck winemaker determined to show people how it’s done. They also don’t come with exorbitant price tags. Just the quality that comes from careful farming and control over the winemaking.
To make their wines, the Morrisons turned to Ed Filice, a veteran winemaker in the Central Coast experienced in making boatloads of inexpensive wine for companies like Coca-Cola, Seagrams and Constellation Brands. I’ll spare you his full resumé, but it includes making million-gallon lots of California Chablis, the kind of wine I recall being button #4 on the soda hose at the National Press Club bar back in the day. Filice also worked on the once popular, affordable and widely available Mark West Pinot Noir, for which “it was my charter to buy up every ton of Pinot Noir I could find along the Central Coast, from Monterey County down to Santa Barbara County, and from east to west,” he told me in a phone interview.1
Today, Filice relishes making smaller lots of high-quality Chardonnay for JL Wood. He says, somewhat disingenuously, “You have to try to make a bad Chard out of Monterey County,” but he has his own views of how to do it.
“It’s a different kind of hard,” he says of working with 1-ton lots of grapes instead of millions of gallons. That requires special care in the vineyard and a quick trigger for starting harvest.
“I’ve always liked acidity, freshness, and bright, clean crisp flavors. I was not a hang time devotee,” Filice said. “I want to pick it at the precise time when the fruit is starting to show, not when it’s the highest sugar. The sugar just masks that fruit.”
JL Wood makes Chardonnays in different styles to appeal to fans of old-time Cali Chard as well as burgundy devotees. The difference is primarily in the extent of malolactic fermentation employed, Filice explained. He tends to be light-handed with oak.
“More is not better,” he said. “I don’t want you drinking oak.”
JL Wood Chardonnay 2023, Arroyo Seco, Monterey County. 13.5% abv. Although the label doesn’t specify, this is unoaked, in a traditional Chablis style. It seems straightforward and simple at first, but then notes of peach and apricot emerge and persist through a long finish. No malolactic fermentation means the wine retains refreshing acidity, while the ripeness of the grapes provides sufficient weight and structure. $18.50. GREAT VALUE.
JL Wood Classic Chardonnay 2023, Arroyo Seco, Monterey County. 13.4% abv. This wine harks back to the classic California style of Chardonnay, barrel fermented and aged, buttery with full malolactic fermentation. The oak is well integrated and doesn’t clobber your palate with a 2x4. $49.
JL Wood Premier Chardonnay 2023, Arroyo Seco, Monterey County. 13.4% abv. My favorite of the line, with enough oak influence to add a hint of toast and structure to the mouth-filling texture and abundant orchard fruit flavors. Filice arrested the malolactic fermentation partway through to retain the wine’s vibrant acidity. $28.
The winery offers a reduced-alcohol (9.7%) Chardonnay called “Hoo Knew,” ($19) which I did not try, and a 2021 Nouveau that I felt had lost much of its fruit characteristics.
This makes me want to ply Filice with wine and get him talking about those vineyards. I’d love to know what wines those grapes go into today.