Joie Farm Unoaked Chardonnay 2017

Christian Marcoux rated this wine as 90/100 with the following review:

Located in the beautiful Okanagan Valley, the Joie Farm Winery creates well renowned wines, such as the Un-oaked Chardonnay 2017. This wine shows aromas of apricot, starfruit, yellow apple, saline, honey and pie crust. Fresh medium body, delicious acidity and a fruit foward finish that lingers with every sip. Palate: pineapple, starfruit, lime peel, citrus blossom, saline, honey suckle and spice. Enjoy.

Deborah Podurgiel WSET IV Candidate rated this wine as 92/100 with the following review:

To say that Joie Farm, Un-oaked Chardonnay is a Chablis-style Chardonnay is simplistic. There is quite the process that goes into making this wine. And, fair enough, on the nose and palate, it does taste Chablish. But added to the lemon sunshine, mineral and fresh apple nose is a weave of pineapple and mandarin aromas. As you can expect, the 100% Chardonnay is dry, zesty, with mouth-watering acidity and clean crisp flavours of fresh apple, green melon, soft orange and pineapple flavours all wrapped up in a light briny minerality in a very good way.

Wine grapes are hand-harvested from the Con Vida Vineyard on the Skaha Bluff and Plein de Vie Vineyard on the Naramata Bench. Grapes are destemmed then slowly and gently pressed. The pressed juice is hyperoxidated, racked and left to settle for a couple of days. The racked juice is cool-fermented in stainless steel tank to preserve all the freshness the grapes can offer. Half the must is inoculated with a champagne yeast; the other half with an ester-forward culture yeast to bring about the tropical fruit aromas and body in the wine. The wine undergoes lees stirring (no malolactic fermentation) until both wines are ready to be blended. The wine is protein, cold stabilized and then gently filtered. What to pair it with. You guessed it – a variety of raw oysters on the half shell. Chill the wine (and the oysters) and enjoy now.