I attended a practice blind tasting last night for the WSET Level 3 exam. One of the wines we drank was this Chardonnay. It was obvious from the first whiff that this was a Cali doozy. I wrote that the wine was a medium shade of lemon and had a medium (+) intensity nose of……. toast, butter, bread, acacia, melon and banana, I found it youthful. Read those descriptors again. There is no mention of citrus or stone. The palate was much the same in flavors with medium (+) acidity, high alcohol, medium (+) body and was obviously dry in nature. This is a developing wine with plenty of potential to age. I thought it was good to outstanding and would think it gets 92 points. At $60 a pop, this highly rated (94-95 by the pros) wine gets 5 stars.
My initial reaction to smelling this wine was that it had been worked over pretty hard. When I say that, I mean it went through Malolactic Conversion/Fermentation and I even thought it had been treated Sur Lie. I was right. The winery notes mention both processes and explain why it was sooo buttery, with heavy doses of bread, toast etc. It’s not my style of wine, but I took the half bottle home to revisit it. Paired with a rice and chicken dish it did okay, but the overpowering tertiary notes are really not up my alley. If you like a rich, full-on Napa/Sonoma Chardonnay with gobs of upfront tertiary notes, go for it. At least try it once. Drink till 2030. Salut….


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