en-us 720 An RSS feed brimming with wine-tasting lingo, grape types, and other intoxicating info. <p>[shuh-LOHN] Small 8,600-acre <span style='font-variant: small-caps;'>ava</span> located in Monterey County, California. It has only one winery-<span style='font-variant: small-caps;'>chalone vineyard</span>, which is in the hills southeast of Salinas and northeast of Soledad. In the 1990s Michael Michaud, general manager and winemaker at Chalone, bought land from Chalone and began to develop Michaud Vineyard, to which he devoted full attention starting in 1998. So far he has not built a winery on the property. Because the Chalone area sits above the Salinas Valley fog, it has higher temperatures than the valley floor. The Chalone <ilnk ds_id="2447" entry_key="viticultural_area" tname="viticultural-area"><span style='font-variant: small-caps;'>viticultural area</span></ilnk> falls into the Region II or Region III category (<i>see</i> <ilnk ds_id="2447" entry_key="climate_regions_of_california" tname="climate-regions-of-california-1"><span style='font-variant: small-caps;'>climate regions of california</span></ilnk>), depending on a particular year's weather. <ilnk ds_id="2447" entry_key="chardonnay" tname="chardonnay"><span style='font-variant: small-caps;'>chardonnay</span></ilnk> and <ilnk ds_id="2447" entry_key="pinot_noir" tname="pinot-noir"><span style='font-variant: small-caps;'>pinot noir</span></ilnk> are the area's major grapes, followed by <span style='font-variant: small-caps;'><ilnk ds_id="2447" entry_key="chenin_blanc" tname="chenin-blanc">chenin blanc</ilnk></span>, <span style='font-variant: small-caps;'><ilnk ds_id="2447" entry_key="pinot_blanc" tname="pinot-blanc">pinot blanc</ilnk></span> and <ilnk ds_id="2447" entry_key="syrah" tname="syrah"><span style='font-variant: small-caps;'>syrah</span></ilnk> .</p></p><A href="http://www.answers.com/topic/chalone-ava#copyright">&copy; Barron's Educational Series, Inc.</A> http://www.answers.com/topic/chalone-ava http://www.answers.com