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With a release price of $54 for the 750ML bottle, the split should be half. As a $19.99 per half-bottle, this is an outstanding buy that you cannot pass on. The 2011 Loring Durell Vineyard Chardonnay is a tremendous value! This may be one of the best buys we've promoted in chardonnay splits!!

"Brian Loring is a pretty simple person. He makes fruit-forward, juicy wines to drink young, just the way he likes them. An engineer in his former life, Loring has no patience for the imperfections of cork, so everything is bottled under screwcap. A few years ago I was not a huge fan of the Loring wines. I didn’t always think they reflected the personalities of their respective sites, but that seems to be much less of an issue these days. Readers who seek immediacy and exuberance are going to love these wines. Based on the wines I tasted, the 2010s are stronger than the 2011s." - Antonio Galloni

"We decided to make Chardonnay to sell because it's getting harder and harder to find the richer style Chardonnays that we prefer in the marketplace. It seems that stainless steel fermentation and non-ML Chardonnays are all the rage these days. Maybe I'm just not "hip"... but I like some buttery, toasty, oaky goodness in my Chardonnay. Not gobs and gobs of butter and oak, but enough to add texture and depth."

2011 presented California winemakers with some unusual challenges, but ones that weren't necessarily unique, provided you'd been making wine the past decade or so. The cold growing season and resulting late harvest made for a virtual "mirror image" of 2010. The frost issues we had to deal with were similar to those in 2008. The extra dose of the botrytis reminded us of 2006. And the very unusual rain storms mimicked a few vintages that we experienced when we were sourcing fruit from Oregon. While learning things the hard way isn't always fun, we're extremely glad we had those experiences to rely on when making decisions regarding the 2011 harvest.

In many ways, our 2011s will be a carbon copy of our 2010s. Rich yet refined, with good density and concentration of fruit, but without being heavy. Another vintage that leans more towards elegance than raw power. And these are wines that we couldn't have made without going through the trials and tribulations of past vintages."