2021 Lingua Franca Chardonnay Bunker Hill Willamette Valley 750 ml

Lingua Franca’s Bunker Hill stands with top examples of Chardonnay from anywhere in the world. The star of their lineup is 2021 Bunker Hill Chardonnay, an estate-grown stunner from a modern-classic vintage, grown on a cool, windy site. It boasts a stunning 98-point score from Jeb Dunnuck. 

When we visited the Lingua Franca winery a few months ago, winemaker Thomas Savre said something that stopped us in our tracks: The winemaking in Oregon might be better than its counterpart in Burgundy. 

If anyone could credibly make that claim, Thomas would be the man to do it. Born in France, and with experience at Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and Domaine Dujac, he became Dominique Lafon’s right-hand man—first at Evening Land, then here at Lingua Franca. As if to back up his bold statement, he even noted Lafon’s wineries in Burgundy were starting to implement ideas that originated in Oregon.

The Bunker Hill Vineyard, a windy site in the Willamette Valley’s South Salem Hills, boasts some of the oldest Dijon-clone Chardonnay plantings in Oregon—and this wine is sourced from those rows in the vineyard. All Lingua Franca’s sites are farmed with sustainability in mind: The legendary Mimi Casteel—whose specialty is regenerative viticulture—was a part of the project at the very beginning, and set up many of Lingua Franca’s farming practices.

In the cellar, this bears the hallmarks of Lafon-style winemaking: Careful whole-cluster pressing yielded juice with bright, vibrant flavors. After careful settling in tank, the wine fermented and then aged in a combination of large and small French oak barrels, 22% of which were new. The result is spectacular—some of the best Chardonnay in the world.