Bethel Heights Chardonnay Casteel 2018

The reserve that carries the family name.

Bethel Heights is Willamette Valley royalty — planted in the Eola-Amity Hills in 1977 by Terry Casteel and Marilyn Webb, and today in the hands of their son Ben Casteel, who cut his teeth on the '99 harvest in Burgundy and five years at Rex Hill under Lynn Penner-Ash before coming home.

Casteel is the wine that bears the family name for a reason: a barrel selection of the estate's finest lots each vintage, anchored by Wente-clone Chardonnay planted in 1977 — among the oldest Chardonnay vines in the Eola-Amity Hills — rounded out with fruit from the Justice Vineyard. Barrel-fermented, built on the tension between richness and the cool-site acidity these hills are famous for.

Critics average 92 points on the 2018, and the vintage trades around $86 online → we're under that, with seven years of bottle age already banked. Twenty bottles.