A single-vineyard Sta. Rita Hills Chardonnay from one of California's most precise young houses, now with several years in bottle behind it — and in a half-bottle, which is the rare chance to open something serious on a weeknight without committing to 750ml. Justin Willett founded Tyler in 2005 at 24, with a few barrels tucked into the corner of the cellar where he was then the assistant winemaker, and the style he worked out there hasn't wavered: fruit farmed organically and picked at night, native-yeast fermentation in large oak vats, then down to barrel for elevage with oak used judiciously and never allowed to dominate. That restraint is the whole point. The Sta. Rita Hills is a landscape of transverse ranges and valleys, its marine-sediment hills thrown open to ocean winds — conditions that give Chardonnay a natural tension that doesn't need dressing up. Willett is after clarity and poise — wines led by structure and persistence rather than weight — and Duncan Family is one of the vineyard-designates where he makes that case.