| Chardonnay 2008 Tasting Report |
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| J.M. Boillot 2004 Montagny 1er Cru – Burgundy, France |
Notes – Yellow apples, pineapple and moderate oak
shadings with butterscotch. This wine was a dark
golden yellow and by far the most tannic wine. Yes I
said tannic! It made the roof of your mouth furry.
Probably the most complex of all the Chardonnay wines
we tasted with a long lingering finish. This wine has
another five years of life left in it. It was indeed quite
tasty.
shadings with butterscotch. This wine was a dark
golden yellow and by far the most tannic wine. Yes I
said tannic! It made the roof of your mouth furry.
Probably the most complex of all the Chardonnay wines
we tasted with a long lingering finish. This wine has
another five years of life left in it. It was indeed quite
tasty.
| About $27.00 |
| Score A- |
| Gundlach Bundschu 2005 Rhinefarm Vineyard – Sonoma, CA |
Notes – Bright and lemony with slate and minerals.
Which is how we got confused and thought it was the
Burgundy. Plenty of lemon custard pie on the palate.
Creamy with slight use of oak turning a little stony on
the finish. You know with heavyweights like Ramey
(known for their Chardonnay) and Stag’s Leap Wine
Cellars, you had to silently be routing for the underdog,
Gundlach Bundschu and it delivered for us. If you are
a fan of the big butter & oak bomb California
Chardonnay, this wine would not be the one for you.
Which is how we got confused and thought it was the
Burgundy. Plenty of lemon custard pie on the palate.
Creamy with slight use of oak turning a little stony on
the finish. You know with heavyweights like Ramey
(known for their Chardonnay) and Stag’s Leap Wine
Cellars, you had to silently be routing for the underdog,
Gundlach Bundschu and it delivered for us. If you are
a fan of the big butter & oak bomb California
Chardonnay, this wine would not be the one for you.
| Around $19.00 |
| Score A- |
| Ramey 2006 Russian River – Sonoma, CA |
Notes – This golden wine had the all familiar toast and
marshmallows nose and that buttery malo mouth feel
filled with pear, pineapples, with light oak flavors and
high alcohol. It did keep up the acidity level, which
makes it evenly balanced. Another solid wine from a
winery that does a splendid job with the varietal. The
top three wines separated themselves quite well from
our bottom two. This is more like the California
Chardonnays that you’ve come to know and love…or
hate depending on your tastes.
marshmallows nose and that buttery malo mouth feel
filled with pear, pineapples, with light oak flavors and
high alcohol. It did keep up the acidity level, which
makes it evenly balanced. Another solid wine from a
winery that does a splendid job with the varietal. The
top three wines separated themselves quite well from
our bottom two. This is more like the California
Chardonnays that you’ve come to know and love…or
hate depending on your tastes.
| Score B+ |
| About $39.00 |
| Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars 2005 Karia – Napa Valley, CA |
Notes – A lighter yellow wine with a funky nose at
first. Lots of creamy malo, but somehow kept up its
acidity. It shows lemon-lime fruit with a fat body. Well
we managed to get a wine from the winery that beat out
the French in Cabernet portion of the Paris Tasting. I
reckon that Cabernet Sauvignon would have been the
better choice from this winery.
first. Lots of creamy malo, but somehow kept up its
acidity. It shows lemon-lime fruit with a fat body. Well
we managed to get a wine from the winery that beat out
the French in Cabernet portion of the Paris Tasting. I
reckon that Cabernet Sauvignon would have been the
better choice from this winery.
| Score B |
| Around $35.00 |
| Franciscan 2006 – Napa Valley, CA |
Notes – Yellow with a greenish hue. The nose was
closed and hard to pick up on, but on the palate there is
a little nutmeg, lemon and pineapple. A re-occurring
theme. Fairly non-descript, just kind of there. By
itself this wine might have had shown better, but it was
overshadowed by the Chardonnay wines with more of
an assertive personality.
closed and hard to pick up on, but on the palate there is
a little nutmeg, lemon and pineapple. A re-occurring
theme. Fairly non-descript, just kind of there. By
itself this wine might have had shown better, but it was
overshadowed by the Chardonnay wines with more of
an assertive personality.
| About $16.00 |
| Score B |
Well it took us almost five years, but we finally did it! Our
ABC (anything but chardonnay) staff reviewed and blind
tasted five Chardonnay wines. All but one coming from
California. Throughout the course of the month leading up
to this tasting, I had to endure perpetual moaning and
groaning from all of the staff members. The number of
staff members that could make this tasting seemed to
dwindle as the week progressed. One member even
revolted and brought a red wine to the tasting anyway! Oh
the comments…you would have thought this was a
turpentine tasting. I had to politely remind everyone that
Chardonnay is one of God’s little children too!
I have forced myself this year, especially since it has
become hot outside, to experiment with some different
Chardonnay wines and I feel that I have become a better
man for it! Some I liked, some I disliked, but it has been
fun to revisit a wine that I had basically left for dead. Now
to be perfectly fair, I do and have always loved White
Burgundy (France), which is of course made from the
Chardonnay grape, but I really don’t consider Burgundies
to be the same wine. To me at least, they taste drastically
different and are much more food friendly. None-the-less,
with the exception of a few of my personal favorite
Chardonnay wines, such as; Chateau Montelena’s and
Llano Estacado’s Reserve Chardonnay, I pretty much went
out of my way to avoid Chardonnay wine, reaching for a
cool Sauvignon Blanc or Pinot Grigio instead. Arguably
better food wines and more refreshing to drink to me at
least.
The timing could not have been more brilliant on our part.
Especially with the premiere next month of “Bottle Shock”
the movie based on the Chateau Montelena Chardonnay
that beat out the best of the French White Burgundies in
the 1976 Paris Tasting. Throw in the fact that it is around
100 degrees outside and it would appear more logical to
review a wine style of the cool and refreshing variety. We
are also approaching the five-year anniversary of the
Dallas Secret Wine Society and it would be embarrassing if
we had never covered the most popular grape varietal on
earth in that time.
And so I learned a little about Chardonnay wines and
myself during this tasting. For starters, unlike so many
other varietals, Chardonnay is really tough to pick up on
flavor profiles other than the obvious oak influence. They
seem to be very neutral. Some wines were tough to tell
from one another. I usually like to try to guess whose wine
we are tasting, kind of a little extra challenge for myself.
Usually I am pretty good at it, but when it comes to picking
out Chardonnay wines, I suck at it! To add insult to injury,
I even pegged to Gundlach Bundschu Chardonnay to be
the Burgundy wine, which should have been the easiest
wine to pick out, right? The ironic thing was that even
though I swore up and down the Gundlach Bundschu was
the Burgundy, the actual Burgundy in the tasting was my
favorite wine of the five. So at least that remains
consistent!
Our tasting this month was hosted by two of our founding
members, Jennifer and Ian, who provided us with some
assorted cheeses and palate cleansing crackers. More
importantly, they provided us with some red wine to please
the angry mob upon the completion of our Chardonnay
tasting. At the conclusion, I was left with five half full
bottles of Chardonnay wine, to which I am drinking one of
the two winners right now as I type. Still trying to convert
myself to a Chardonnay frame of mind. And so we have
done our good deed and gave that one last, major varietal,
a space on our five year old website. Thank you Ian and
Jenn for hosting!
Here’s what we thought about’em! It should be noted that
the first two wines tied. The one we thought was the
Burgundy and the one that really was the Burgundy! Ha!
Isn’t life ironic?
ABC (anything but chardonnay) staff reviewed and blind
tasted five Chardonnay wines. All but one coming from
California. Throughout the course of the month leading up
to this tasting, I had to endure perpetual moaning and
groaning from all of the staff members. The number of
staff members that could make this tasting seemed to
dwindle as the week progressed. One member even
revolted and brought a red wine to the tasting anyway! Oh
the comments…you would have thought this was a
turpentine tasting. I had to politely remind everyone that
Chardonnay is one of God’s little children too!
I have forced myself this year, especially since it has
become hot outside, to experiment with some different
Chardonnay wines and I feel that I have become a better
man for it! Some I liked, some I disliked, but it has been
fun to revisit a wine that I had basically left for dead. Now
to be perfectly fair, I do and have always loved White
Burgundy (France), which is of course made from the
Chardonnay grape, but I really don’t consider Burgundies
to be the same wine. To me at least, they taste drastically
different and are much more food friendly. None-the-less,
with the exception of a few of my personal favorite
Chardonnay wines, such as; Chateau Montelena’s and
Llano Estacado’s Reserve Chardonnay, I pretty much went
out of my way to avoid Chardonnay wine, reaching for a
cool Sauvignon Blanc or Pinot Grigio instead. Arguably
better food wines and more refreshing to drink to me at
least.
The timing could not have been more brilliant on our part.
Especially with the premiere next month of “Bottle Shock”
the movie based on the Chateau Montelena Chardonnay
that beat out the best of the French White Burgundies in
the 1976 Paris Tasting. Throw in the fact that it is around
100 degrees outside and it would appear more logical to
review a wine style of the cool and refreshing variety. We
are also approaching the five-year anniversary of the
Dallas Secret Wine Society and it would be embarrassing if
we had never covered the most popular grape varietal on
earth in that time.
And so I learned a little about Chardonnay wines and
myself during this tasting. For starters, unlike so many
other varietals, Chardonnay is really tough to pick up on
flavor profiles other than the obvious oak influence. They
seem to be very neutral. Some wines were tough to tell
from one another. I usually like to try to guess whose wine
we are tasting, kind of a little extra challenge for myself.
Usually I am pretty good at it, but when it comes to picking
out Chardonnay wines, I suck at it! To add insult to injury,
I even pegged to Gundlach Bundschu Chardonnay to be
the Burgundy wine, which should have been the easiest
wine to pick out, right? The ironic thing was that even
though I swore up and down the Gundlach Bundschu was
the Burgundy, the actual Burgundy in the tasting was my
favorite wine of the five. So at least that remains
consistent!
Our tasting this month was hosted by two of our founding
members, Jennifer and Ian, who provided us with some
assorted cheeses and palate cleansing crackers. More
importantly, they provided us with some red wine to please
the angry mob upon the completion of our Chardonnay
tasting. At the conclusion, I was left with five half full
bottles of Chardonnay wine, to which I am drinking one of
the two winners right now as I type. Still trying to convert
myself to a Chardonnay frame of mind. And so we have
done our good deed and gave that one last, major varietal,
a space on our five year old website. Thank you Ian and
Jenn for hosting!
Here’s what we thought about’em! It should be noted that
the first two wines tied. The one we thought was the
Burgundy and the one that really was the Burgundy! Ha!
Isn’t life ironic?
