Wenzlau sits on a dramatic limestone-rich hillside above the Santa Ynez River, and it’s one of the sites that convinced the Racines team – Burgundy’s Etienne de Montille and Brian Sieve, with Champagne’s Rodolphe Peters – to put down roots in California at all. The chalky soils here do something specific to Chardonnay: they give it lift and tension rather than weight. Fermented with native yeasts in large French oak puncheons with only a modest fraction of new wood, then a year on its fine lees before finishing in stainless steel, this is Chardonnay made with a light hand on purpose. Airy, saline, and finely drawn – a California white built like a Burgundian one, without pretending to be from anywhere but the Sta. Rita Hills.