Category: Wine Reviews

An old favorite of mine from years ago, I haven’t tasted this wine in a long time. Generously gifted to me by a dear friend, I truly enjoyed getting reacquainted with Lava Cap.

Enjoy notes of pear and apple aromas in the nose followed by delicious tastes of vanilla and butterscotch. It’s 15% alcohol, which is big for a chardonnay, giving it a slightly incisive and warm finish that lingers on your palate. This wine is full of flavor, with a big mouthfeel. Chew on this one to really taste all of the deliciousness in this wine.

The wine was aged in 100% French oak barrels, leaving it with a touch of oak in the finish.

We paired this wine with Beecher’s No Woman cheese, infused with Jamaican Jerk Spices and the wine was bold and flavorful enough not to be overpowered by the cheese.

This is a lovely chardonnay that was recommended to me by one of the wine servers at Matchbook. She overheard me talking about the style of chardonnay that I like (and Matchbook’s Arsonist Chardonnay is one of my favorites) and recommended this one from San Luis Obispo, California.

Upon raising the glass to my nose, I detected some toasty oak. Okay, so good, so far. But, there is also a faint buttery aroma, as well. My tasting partner says he could pick up buttery biscuits in the nose.

This is a classic California chardonnay, soft and round and smooth with luscious stone and tropical fruit flavors integrated in the flavor. The mouthfeel is also soft and round, with an easy finish. The wine is polished and refined, yet flavorful. The color is pale and golden. Alcohol is 13.9%.Unfortunately, the 2012 is no longer available on the winery’s website. We picked up this bottle at Total Wine and I suspect that their chardonnays are pretty consistent so I will be on the hunt for another bottle soon…

I wasn’t even going to review this wine.  I went down to my basement tonight and grabbed a bottle of what I thought was just an everyday drinking wine, but what a surprise!

The nose is full of sweet scents of pear and vanilla with hints of oak.  This is a medium bodied wine with pineapple and tropical notes, layered with honey and butter.  The texture is soft and round.  I like that the nose is so full of aroma, it compliments the taste of the wine and adds another dimension to the whole tasting experience.

This was another Safeway wine on sale at just $13.49.  It hails from the Russian River Valley, one of my favorite wine producing regions.  13.9% in alcohol.

This is going to become a regular in my wine rack!

Tonight I’m trying one of my new “box” meals from Hello Fresh.  This is one of those companies that promises to send you all of the fresh ingredients, right sized for two people or four, complete with cooking instructions.  Well, I can’t start cooking without a glass of wine, can I?  So read with me while I try this Chloe Chardonnay made from grapes from Sonoma County.

There are nuances of oak and vanilla in the nose.  This is not a big, bold, complex chardonnay but the mouth feel is a real pleasure.  Lots of legs on this wine, with a beautiful, light golden color.  With a creamy, silky finish, this is a sophisticated and refined wine.  It is a delicious wine to sip all by itself or with food.

I paid $11.69, on sale at Safeway, for this wine.  13.5% in alcohol.  Enjoy!

I was very excited to stop by this winery during our trip through Mendocino and Sonoma Counties last fall. It was on my list of recommended wineries from a blog I read before we headed out to wine country. The winery itself was plenty busy on a Friday afternoon and the staff was very friendly.

At first, I couldn’t detect much in the nose, but the second pour revealed a slight scent of freshly sliced fruit. This is a rich and creamy, well-structured wine with a very pleasant mouthfeel. It is layered with ripe fruit characteristics and a hint of vanilla. Enjoy the ripe, full roundness on the palate.

The color is light golden in appearance, and the wine has plenty of legs. Alcohol is 14.4% in volume. The wine sells for $30 at the winery which is where I purchased it.  Or, check Vivino.com for prices from $22.99 to $26.99.

 

Matchbook Wine Company is quickly becoming one of my favorite wineries, producing as many as five different chardonnays. The winery produces four different brands of wine: Matchbook, Mossback, Chasing Venus, and Sawbuck.

Located in Dunnigan Hills, about thirty minutes north of Sacramento, Matchbook has a beautiful facility overlooking their vineyards on rolling green hills. To compare and contrast, today I am tasting three of their most popular chardonnays.

Mossback 2014 Russian River Valley Chardonnay

Mossback is an old fashioned term for farmers, and the owners, being grape growers as well as winemakers, can identify with the profession.

Apple and citrus aromas with a hint of vanilla waft up from the glass of this wine produced from grapes out of the Russian River Valley. It has a rich and creamy texture, and is soft and round on the palate. There is some acidity in the finish. Although this wine is softer and milder, lacking the butterscotch flavor that I typically find in a Russian River Valley chardonnay, it is lovely and quite drinkable. The alcohol is 13.9%. It sells for $17.99 a bottle in the winery.

Matchbook 2013 Giguire Musque Dunnigan Hills Chardonnay

Musque is the French term meaning both perfumed and muscat-like. What a beautiful nose, truly perfumed, enhancing the tasting experience with such wonderful smells. The wine itself is layered with honeysuckle, orange blossom and pear overtones. The body is thinner than the Mossback. It is round, soft, and has a lingering finish with a hint of apricot at the end. The alcohol is 13.5%. This wine sells for $15.99 a bottle at the winery.

Arsonist 2013 Dunnigan Hills Chardonnay

The winemaker describes this as a big, rich, creamy, full flavored chardonnay and I have to agree. This is my favorite wine at Matchbook and very closely matches what I have been looking for in that “good, old-fashioned” style of chardonnay.

I smell toasted oak and hints of vanilla in the nose. This has a rich, creamy mouthfeel. This is what chardonnay should taste like. The flavor of the grape comes through in this wine and is not overpowered by the French, American, and Hungarian oak barrels in which it was aged. There is a taste of sweet caramel in the finish. The wine is 14.3% in alcohol. It sells for $21.99 a bottle at the winery, but is also widely available commercially. Look for it on sale at your local grocery store.

According to the label, these grapes were grown in a rugged, desert land in Patagonia, Argentina, that was inhabited for centuries by the fierce Mapuche Indians.  The Mapuche had oasis sanctuaries which became holy sites called Quimay or blessed water.  Today the vineyards are planted in many of these areas brought to life in a harsh terrain by the Mapuche’s blessed water.

We recently returned from a trip to South America where we tasted many wines from Patagonia, Mendoza, Chile, and even Uruguay.  My husband, feeling sentimental about Patagonia, saw this bottle of wine in a local liquor store and picked it up for me.  So, I decided to try it and share my thoughts about this chardonnay that doesn’t really taste like a chardonnay.

This wine has a faint scent of ripe pear in the nose.  At first taste, the wine seems bright and fresh with lots of acidity.  But as it warms, it becomes more complex with a slight lingering finish.  This is not an oaky, creamy chardonnay, but it is imminently drinkable and would stand up well to a lot of different foods.

If you’ve been reading some of my recent reviews of Sonoma County wines, you’ll laugh when I tell you the wine was only $3 a bottle.  Again, this was not my dream wine, but at $3 a bottle for a generic bottle of white wine, it wouldn’t hurt to keep some around for your next party for your less discriminating white wine drinkers.

Parducci was one of my favorite wineries that we visited on a recent trip through Mendocino and Sonoma Counties. On the day we stopped by, we were the only ones in the winery and we got extra special attention. Every wine we tasted there was delightful, so much so that we joined their wine club.

The nose on this wine is clean with mild scents of pear. It has a polished, yet rich style and the texture is somewhat creamy. I tasted slight summer fruit flavors. The finish is round and smooth, not incisive. The wine was aged in 100% new French oak, but the oak is not overly pronounced in this vintage.

Upon drinking the remainder of this bottle the next day, I discovered the wine had even more complexity and flavor. Enjoy it with a roasted chicken if serving with food, or just enjoy it alone!