Chardonnay remains a tale of two worlds.  One way to consider that proposition is by pondering the polarized old and new world style profiles.  But even setting continental divides aside, the two tales of Chardonnay remain conflicted inside the US.  I was reminded of this when the folks at Harvest PR & Marketing got in touch with me during their work on the inaugural release of Domaine Serene 2010 Evenstad Reserve Chardonnay.

We had a discussion based on, among a few other things, these questions:

1. Are you familiar with Domaine Serene?
2. How often do you drink Chardonnay, and for what occasion(s)?
3. What’s your experience with Willamette Valley Chardonnay (and/or Dijon clones), and how do you think it compares to Chardonnays of other regions?
4. How would you describe Chardonnay’s current reputation among your readers and consumers?

I am quite familiar with Domaine Serene’s outstanding Pinot Noir program, don’t drink Chardonnay nearly as much as I used to, and have little experience with the variety in Willamette.  Question #4 was an intriguing one and it gave away the PR and marketing challenge Domaine Serene confronted; what is Chardonnay’s reputation with readers and consumers?  In one Chardonnay tale reported on by the Wine Institute, it is “the most widely planted winegrape (95,271 acres) and ..the most popular wine in the U.S….with sales increases every year….28 percent of California’s table wine volume shipped to the U.S. market in 2010.” Face value, the consumer data is all green lights.

But in a separate Chardonnay tale, the once familiar ABC (anything but Chardonnay) tale, more selective consumers have said “no” to Chardonnay and searched for white wine substitues.  The truth to tale #2 is now better understood as the outcry for fruit-not butter and oak, and wines with balance and acidity to make you salivate and that taste good with food.  While I used to drink a lot more Chardonnay through the mid 90′s, I did get tired picking through a sea of imbalanced, heavily-oaked and caramel renditions in search of the pinpoint balance and fruit focus that makes Chardonnay a world class wine.  Still, so many of the younger wine drinkers (meaning under 40) I know resist Chardonnay, replaced by “hipper” Albarino, Pinot Grigio, Godello, Chenin Blanc, Riesling, Gruner Veltliner, and a longer list of white varieties you can’t easily spell or pronounce.

Somewhat guilty myself, I moved around with my head down these past ten years, lured to the Loire Valley, Burgundy, Galicia, Lombardy,and elsewhere,…getting caught up in discovery and failing to check back in on American winemakers now paying homage to the more traditional Burgundian Chardonnay treatment that at least one significant piece of the market has been screaming for more of.  For sure, the vast US acreage planted to Chardonnay is supported by plenty of bulk gooey, oaky, buttery chardonnay being poured all over town, but not for the people I drink wine with.  I remember opening a delicious bottle of 2005 L’angevin Heintz Vineyard Chardonnay upon arrival at a wine tasting and watching in amazement as many said “no thank you” when they recognized the Chardonnay bottle shape.  That kind of formed bias continues to play out in restaurants and wine shops all around America.  But, is it possible that high end domestic winemaking has been running to catch up to the market and it’s still enough of a secret to keep a piece of the potential Chardonnay market sidelined?

I was curious and sympathetic to the Domaine Serene cause because I knew they were up against it if indeed they were going to rely on their Dijon clones to produce Chardonnays that the upper end of the market will stand up and notice.  In exchange for all my jabbering, Domaine Serene’e Allan Carter sent me a bottle of the 2010 Evenstad Reserve Chardonnay, blended from the Cote Sud (47%), Clos du Soleil (23%), Clos du Lune (16%) and Etoile (14%) to taste after just ten days in the bottle.  He sent it alongside their monumental, silky, gorgeous, herb tinged, fruit forward Evenstad Reserve Pinot Noir made in the great 2008 Oregon vintage, just as a matter of context and to demonstrate the abiding quality of the Chardonnay.

If there are more Wilamette, Oregon, or California Chardonnays produced in this style then I have been missing out on something important.  The 2010 Evenstad Reserve Chardonnay has a very light yellow hue, and at first a restrained lemon peel aromatic is all you get, followed by a feint touch of lees as the wine opens.  The wine goes on to provide a totally clean palate impression, with wet slate and resin aromas.  It offers a delicate impression while expressing pure Chardonnay fruit, with always present acidity that gets the juices flowing, but stops short of being overly edgy.  The wine’s purity, cleanliness,and absence of wood reminds me of austere Chablis.  The wine, in two words, is mind blowing.  All the PR babbling about natural wines, clonal legacies, first to plant, and Burgundian style aside, this Chardonnay demonstrates what it will take to regain the attention of the serious upper end of the informed wine market.  And with the freedom for winemakers to style and blend Chardonnay as they please, the landscape is wide open for a high end Chardonnay revival.

I never would have been able to guess this was a US Chardonnay.  That’s my fault because I have not been keeping pace, going along and ignoring Chardonnay because of the wanderless and uninteresting style the varietal adopted as it was popularized and heavily planted.  Bravo Domaine Serene, you have turned my head and produced a Chardonnay of stunning beauty and grace, just like it’s supposed to be.

Note: The wines reviewed here were provided as complimentary press samples.  Information regarding availability, production, or pricing was not available at the time this was published.  The information will be added as it becomes available.

The wines hidden inside brown paper bags came from Fronsac, Castillon, and the Haut Medoc. There were two token wines, one from St. Julien and the other St. Emilion.  The most expensive bottle of 2009 Bordeaux in the lineup was $33 retail, insuring that the evening’s foundation would be poured and hardened sans pedigree. Besides a good look at the vintage’s character, our Boston blind tasting group was poised to hunt value outside the boldly priced classified growths of the undisputed stellar 2009 Bordeaux release.

Great Bordeaux vintages used to be easy to deal with.  Buy the top wines in the best years and lay them away for 10, 20, 50, or 75 years.  That was a no-brainer strategy when first growths like Latour, Haut Brion, and Margaux sold for $50-$75 and second growths like Pichon Lalande cost less than $400 a dozen. Today, the average release price on wine-searcher for one bottle of 2009 Chateau Margaux is $1,352.  Without adjusting purchase patterns, it would be easy to spend $20,000 in every strong vintage on a half dozen cases for the cellar.  Since Bordeaux lives very near the top of the wine food chain in my world, creative acquisition strategies would need to replace shopping lists laden with venerable chateaus.  In the fall of 2011, Neal Martin of the Wine Advocate wrote this after tasting through more than 100 2009 Cru Bourgeois:

…for all those disenfranchised Bordeaux-lovers who vowed never to buy Claret again after facing escalating prices. I would urge you to consider some of the rich pickings to be found. These are wines that are a fraction of the price of the top names, these are wines that are physically available and these are wines that at best, give the Grand Cru Classé a damn good run for their money….They combine Bordeaux classicism with the ripe fruit that the 2009 vintage bestowed, the textures are often silky smooth and many display wonderful delineation, precision and purity on the finish.

Thinking about the glory in Bordeaux, it is impossible to escape the discussion of aging and balance; tannin for structure and its supporting role in aging, fruit for its terroir driven purity and charm, and acidity for the liveliness it gives to the fruit.  While some great vintages showcase riper fruit like 1990 and others more backward tannic cloaked wines like 1986, the best of the best vintages are about impeccable balance. I’ve concluded it’s that balance, along with the natural gifts of the Bordeaux growing region, that allows these wines to age into the gracefully elegant old claret that makes aging Bordeaux a worthwhile endeavor.  We discovered that very signature balance associated with the greatest Bordeaux years in the twelve bottles of humble 2009s we examined next to each other, blind.  If one consistent difference between the greatest chateau and these just might be length of time to maturity, the best of the wines we tasted should deliver magical silky drinking in 10-20 years.

Scanning my notes I noticed repetitive indications of good acidity, manageable tannins, and sweet berry fruit. A friend with one of the finest Bordeaux knowledge banks and tasting acumen despite having grown up in the Languedoc, Jacques, compared these wines to the best of the 2008 vintage; “balanced and nicely rounded….food wines”.  Jacques suggested that the wines would be at their peak in 12-15 years.  The one thing the entire group of 17 seemed to agree on is that the best of the wines we tasted were severe values, and a viable path to filling a piece of the cellar as homage to the ’09 vintage.  For my part, I will be buying the top five wines by the case and laying them away for at least ten years.  Here are some of the highlight wines of the evening:

$31 **** 2009 La Vieille Cure, Fronsac

The evening’s second place wine, and my own favorite wine of the tasting.  The color was the blackest and most opaque of all, with exotic aromas of soy sauce and Szechuan peppercorns, big, ripe, and a lengthy memorable finish.

$24 **** 2009 Chateau Boutisse, St. Emilion

My second favorite wine, but not voted on nor favored by the rest of the group.  Light in color with mocha and tobacco leaf on the nose, the wine combined rich ripe kirsch fruit flavor with a solid finish.  It boasts class and elegance now.

$24 ***1/2 2009 Chateau Bernadotte, Haut Medoc

This was the group’s favorite wine of the night.  I liked the wine, a beautiful perfumed nose, char, rasberry fruit, and excellent acid and tannin levels.

$29 *** Vrai Canon Bouche, Fronsac

While the wine won third place on point votes, it was a highly contested wine with half the group heralding it and the other half stingy in their praise.  I liked the wine for its strength in the mid palate, its richness, and massive mouthfeel.

The only two wines in the group that did not figure into anyone’s recommendations were the Roc and Bouscat Cadus.

WineZag was conceived three years ago this week. Happy Birthday to it! In a related side fact, my two amazing sons are now 21 and 18 years respectively.  With identical veracity, I anticipate the blog’s birthdays as keenly as the boys’ red letter days. Plowing into WineZag’s fourth year of wine content creation, the connections between parenting and wine blogging unfurled themselves in an endless stream of affinities.

How can something as virtual as a blog offer any similarities to the iron clad parent/child relationship?  If you consider 76 million Tamagotchis (that three buttoned, key-chained, screen of a virtual pet that took Japan by storm in 1996) were sold in less than four years, then dancing between virtual and real worlds is anything but unprecedented. Still, it took three years to make this uncanny connection between parenting and blogging.

There are definitely a few important differences between raising children and authoring WineZag.  For one, the blog doesn’t require $500K in college tuitions.  Blogs don’t graduate from diapers to cars either. Also, no health insurance…just the occasional back-up. Finally, at some point in their teens or early twenties, children move on to take care of their own needs independently.  The distinctions between parenting and blogging end here though, replaced by the unavoidable and requisite devotion required to do either one well.

25 Points of Comparability in Wine Blogging and Parenting

• You think and worry about them every day, multiple times
• Progress is keenly monitored for each.  Web analytics, height, weight, report cards, peer group influence, etc.
• You care about who they associate with- links, follows, friends
• Each is injected with your values and vision as they develop their own personalities; they become a vivid reflection of you
• Both require your feeding; words, wisdom, or food.
• You translate your personal learning and experiences for both
• You share travel with them, always taking them with you and seeing things anew through their eyes
• Their schedules, no matter how much they conflict with your own, take precedence
• No matter how tired you are, there is a reserve of energy and focus you can draw on at any time for either
• You make mistakes with both that you don’t realize until later in life.  I wish I could be the perfect parent or blogger, but I am not.
• They talk back to you and you might not like hearing what they have to say; blogs through comments and children, well, they just speak their minds.
• Both provide intense pleasure and are sources of personal accomplishment
• They will or won’t develop authority over time based on how well you did your job
• Both will eventually have Facebook and Twitter identities; another level of worry about who they hang out with
• They require curfews-if you are staying up too late at night with either of them, it will eventually get in the way of your day job
• You are embarrassingly proud of any recognition or awards given by peers or authoritative bodies in their worlds
• Just when you think you’ve got them on the right track, new challenges and hurdles arise
• Both are marathons, not sprints
• Eventually you realize both are thankless jobs, yet you never question either
• It takes a good nine months from the time you start thinking and planning the process until they are live and require your care
• Once you take the plunge, there is no turning back
• The bond that connects you with each is unexplainable to anyone that has not experienced it for themselves
• You can dress them up to look handsome and presentable, but unless they are educated and rich in personal values they won’t get very far in life
• You feel intense guilt and failure when you ignore them for unnatural periods of time
• Eventually you reach the point where you could not imagine life without them

Thanks for everything WineZag, Alex, and Matt.  You have given back so much.  Love you all!

The wines and writers came out from Down Under for Wine Blogging Wednesday 76, celebrating the Barossa Boomerang; a recovery of Australian wine sales in North America.  Ardent Australian juice fans, real time Barossa wine travelers, Aussie wine drinkers on multi-year hiatuses, curiosity seekers, and value chasers all weighed in.  Great insights into the region were shared, and specific wines under $30 have been recommended.

It was great fun instigating this up close and personal Barossa (re?)inspection. Hosting and theming #WBW76 had its rewards, especially since I also once turned my back on these wines like too many North Americans did between 2008 and 2010. I was refreshed, if not totally reconvinced, dipping my own my own toes and palate back into the water somewhere between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Great thanks to all that participated.  Here’s the wrap-up:

• Bob at 2001 Bottles-A Wine Odyssey was actually posting from Barossa and shared some very fresh info on Langmeil’s 2009 Valley Floor Shiraz
• The Wine Muse doesn’t believe that Barossa “needs to be reduxed at all” and reminded us that Barossa covers both the Eden and Barossa Valleys.  Notes are available on Kalleske Dodger Tempranillo 10,Tscharke Marananga Girl Talk Savagnin 11, and Charles Melton The Kirche 09 Shiraz
• I shared some perspective on aging Barossa cabernet at WineZag.
• The Wine Predator left us hanging a bit, hoping to qualify for an upcoming wine trip to Australia and shared a picture of three bottles and promises to let us know her favorite. Here’s Gwendolyn’s Barossa thoughts on Grateful Palate, Chris Ringland etc!
• BrixChicks provided a little insight into Cupcake Vineyards and winemaker Adam Richardson .
• Enoflyz went above and beyond down under and provided tasting notes 0n 2010 Schild Estate GMS at Cellar Tracker as well as some context on the grenache, mourvedre, and syrah blend at his blog.
• The Hudson Valley Wine Goddess told us about a really interesting sounding St. Hallett 2006 Gamekeeper’s Reserve.
• Marie at Life of Vines, and Queen of #WineChat (:-) reminded us of the big bold value $23 Torbreck Woodcutter’s Shiraz.
• Kathryn Boyd shared tasting notes and this photo of Yalumba Patchwork Shiraz.
• “Seduction” was discovered by Talk-a-Vino for less than $9 in (on?) this bottle of 2008 Fetish Playmates Barossa Valley.
• Tim Elliot- the man behind Wine Blogging Wednesday also reconnected with his Aussie memories through this bottle of 14.5% alcohol $18 2009 Schild Estate Shiraz.

Thanks again to all the digital winos that helped bring Barossa back into the limelight.  And thanks to Lenn Thompson and Tim Elliot for keeping the lights on for Wine Blogging Wednesday every month!

How does Barossa cabernet sauvignon age?  Here’s some insight based on only one example; $29.99 Rolf Binder’s 1996 Cabernet Sauvignon from his Veritas Winery.  While the question deserves more exhaustive tasting with full sets of wines, this was a telling experiment using just one cabernet from a top Barossa winery.

WINE BLOGGING WEDNESDAY 76: BAROSSA BOOMERANG

While admittedly contributing, in my own small way, to the statistical decline of Australian wine retail sales and imports in the US, I simultaneously ignored a small section of mid 1990′s Australian cabernet tucked away, out of clear sight lines, in my own cellar.  I was on the hunt for alternative sources of value in cabernet during the 1990′s as California producers consistently accelerated price points despite inconsistent product quality.  Probably symptomatic of the export problems Barossa experienced between 2008-2010, the young cabernets did not figure into my palate; excessively ripe and hot product fell short or hid the elegance, restraint, and nuance I was trained to appreciate by Bordeaux and a smattering of California cabernet producers.  I knew others bowed appreciatively to the Aussie style.  Maybe aging would work for me?

I found this bottle of 1996 Veritas Cabernet searching around the cellar in advance of Wine Blogging Wednesday #76- The Barossa Boomerang.  I planned a longer aging experiment, but needed something under $30, with age, and a variety other than Shiraz to drink now.  The Veritas Winery has a history of making wines with major league expression since 1955, producing fortified wines and old vine mataro at its inception.  While I also found palate alignment challenges with Veritas’ full throttle Hanish Shiraz that made the winery famous with Robert Parker’s followers, I loved Veritas’ late ’90s Clement wines produced from old vine Grenache and Mourvedre.  They were massive and tannic, but had nuance and interesting character underneath it all. So maybe the 15 years in bottle would show that years ago the cabernet character was simply overrun by youthful ripeness and tannin?

Curiously, after a decade and a half in its cold and dark bottle, fresh lively fruit is still dominant on the nose; an amalgam of cassis, bright red berry, and deep black cherry. It’s all somewhat more discernable now. A little toast and fresh pine aromas show up, while the secondary aromas I want more of are either just getting their legs or subdued by the wine’s persistent fruit driven rambunctiousness.  It is a wine you will get more than less from. It’s up to you and your palate if “less is more” or “more is better”.

At 13% alcohol, the wine shows a little more heat than I would prefer, but the fruit has rounded nicely and some, not most, of the tannins have resolved. With an ongoing stiff backbone, it is clear that the age has tamed the wine without changing its overall personality too much.  Silkier fruit and a more elegant mouthfeel have turned the wine from monster to drinkable and left it with a medium finish.  The color was still a clean deep dark red with maybe amber touches at the edge.  My guess is it’s a good thing there is so much living fruit to handle the very present tannins over the next decade or even two.  But the kind of integration and secondary aromas and flavors you might expect from cabernet grown in Bordeaux and California after fifteen years of bottle age remained elusive; for that I am disappointed.

The current day version of 1996 Veritas cabernet showed progress since the youthful version that overwhelmed in less pleasant ways. Understanding that my experiment was only one wine, vintage, and producer, these wines seem to tame themselves without integrating or resolving themselves into a style that is reminiscent of other new and old world cabernet producing regions.  It still reminded me of the young Barossa cabs I had experimented with 15-20 years ago.  Heat, alcohol, ripe desert-appropriate fruit, underbrush or pine, and bold extraction seem to be characteristic of the Barossa style and terroir.  The fact is, a lot of people will fall over themselves for just that kind of wine.

Rolf Binder’s Veritas Winery is a force to be reckoned with in Barossa.  Just try the old vine grenache and mourvedre based wines and see what I mean.  If you like the Aussie style cabernet, I am certain that Binder’s version is worth a go….after aging!