Browse Tag

chardonnay

Lenoble rot

Lenoble 1998 Champagne “Grand Cru” Blanc de Blancs (Champagne) – Lemon and massive appleness. Bright and sharp, though perhaps a bit obvious. (2/07)

Are you Strong enough to be my wine?

[bottlel]Rodney Strong 2004 Chardonnay (Sonoma County) – Candy caramel (in other words, not the serious stuff) and synthetic apricot with a harsh, battery-like acidity. No good, but I think the bottle has suffered heat damage somewhere along the line. (2/08)

Mercaptan, my captain

Neudorf 2003 Chardonnay (Nelson) – Mercaptans and butter, followed by much more appealing orange and tangerine, with a bright and balanced finish. This isn’t doing all that well at the moment, but a little time might help. (3/05)

Blancjolais

JP Brun “Terres Dorées” 2006 Beaujolais Blanc Chardonnay (Beaujolais) – Salted gravel, lemon leaves, and orange blossom. Aromatically, this is approaching viognier territory at the moment, though it’s too light and lively to actually be viognier. (1/08)

Chahdinnaiy

Selaks “Premium Selection” 2005 Chardonnay (Marlborough) – Clove, nutmeg, and browned butter with Mandarin orange. Sultry brown apple joins the spicy fruit basket on the finish, which is a bit sticky. Before that, however, the wine seems in fair balance. Drink soon. (5/07)

Carneros park

[bottle]Rombauer 2005 Chardonnay (Carneros) – Oaky, full-bodied, silky and lush, and quite openly sweet on the palate. Very, very simple, and seemingly pointed at the widest possible audience of chardonnay-as-cocktail drinkers, in which context I think it should be viewed. (5/07)

Estate sale

[label]Kahurangi Estate 2003 Chardonnay (Moutere) – 70% malolactic, and subjected to a mix of barrels and staves, showing clove-spiced apple with a good deal of orange juice on the finish. Basic and pleasant enough in this style, though without anything else to say. (3/05)

Get the wood out

[label]Kahurangi Estate 2004 “Unwooded” Chardonnay (Nelson) – No wood…and no malo, either. This is the estate’s biggest seller. Unfortunately, the wine is aromatically dead. Crisp, malic apple dominates the palate, along with greengage plum, but there’s just not much here. It’s inoffensive enough, I suppose. (3/05)

Bea

[label]Kahurangi Estate 2003 Chardonnay Mt. Arthur (Moutere) – 100% American oak (which is strange, as I’ve written elsewhere in my notebook that Day claims to use all French oak…no doubt one entry or the other is an error). Sweaty banana with other tropical aromas, crisp on the midpalate and then bitter and resinous on the finish. It’s woody, to be sure, and though there’s certainly fruit, the wood imprint here is off-putting more for its character than its quantity. (3/05)

Brun the day

JP Brun “Terres Dorées” 2001 Beaujolais Blanc (Beaujolais) – Light whitish-grey earth, dried almond skin, nut shells which transform to an old, dried-nut bitterness on the finish. The wine’s hollowing out, and while it’s long on the palate, it’s somewhat wan. Air helps, and after an hour or so there’s a lemon/grapefruit element in the mix, with a heavier mouthfeel and a zippy, cleansing element to the finish, but it’s still hollow. This was better a few years ago. (9/07)