chardonnay reviews – Chardy Girl

Alpha Omega Chardonnay Napa Valley 2013

I am so excited to try this wine and share it with you!

I first discovered it at a dinner party at the home of our next-door neighbors, frequent visitors to Napa Valley.

When I first tasted it, I immediately fell in love with this wine. Full of flavor and aroma, this wine has the characteristics I’m looking for in a chardonnay.

Being the good friends that our neighbors are, they gave us a bottle for Christmas. It’s hard for me to believe that I could leave it in the basement this long.

The color is straw yellow, bright and shiny. The nose displays pronounced aromas of lightly toasted vanilla, caramel and crème brulee. In fact, it’s so full of aroma I almost want to just smell this wine instead of drink it. But it’s too delicious not to drink!

The bouquet in the nose transitions into a mouthful of flavor, making this wine a pleasure to drink from start to finish. Sometimes a wine will have a delightful bouquet but the taste is not that terrific. Other times, a wine won’t have much of an aroma in the nose but the wine tastes delicious. The Alpha Omega has both.

This is a complex wine with layers of apple, pear in the flavor and butterscotch in the finish. It has a zippy or zesty finish due to the acidity.

It is 14.5 in alcohol and sells for around $50 at a variety of websites like wine.com, garyswine.com and others. It is no longer available at the winery as they are featuring their 2014 release, but plenty of online sites still have it available and it is holding up well.

Now to be honest, I don’t usually spend that kind of money on a chardonnay, but this one is a real treat. I’m glad we saved it and savored it.

Sonoma County Wine Region – Keller Estate

Last on our tour through Sonoma County and the search for exceptional wine tasting experiences was Keller Estate. Located in the southern part of Sonoma County off Lakeville Highway, this Petaluma Gap winery is open by appointment only (although a quick phone call ahead usually gets you in right away, 707.765.2117). When you arrive, expect to be seated, not ushered up to a crowded winetasting counter. The feel here is luxurious and the pace of wine tasting is leisurely. Knowledgeable wine servers share information about the winery and serve popcorn popped in the winery’s estate produced olive oil, with a side of olive oil for dipping. While this might seem like an unusual pairing for wine tasting, the olive oil is quite delicious and the popcorn and olive oil flavors don’t detract from the wines.

Our first visit to Keller was exactly this kind of experience. 90 minutes tasting four wines in the tasting room, overlooking the vineyards and learning about the chardonnays, pinots and the Rotie being poured that day. But our return visit was so amazingly over the top and indulgent that I would happily repeat the experience. Called their Serenity and Wine Brunch, this is a three course, gourmet feast paired with estate wines. For $65 per person or $50 for club members, this is an excellent way to sample the Keller wines.

Brunch is served on the Vineyard Terrace with sweeping views of the vineyards, olive groves and Mt. Tamalpais. Seating is family style at a long, elegantly set table. Be prepared to get to know your table mates as the wine is poured. And, servings are generous! We started with a crisp, dry rose, worked our way through three different chardonnays, sampled a couple of pinot noirs, the Rotie and ended with a sparkling wine.

We even received a special treat at the end. With temperatures hovering around 100 degrees that weekend, Brian, our host, had set up the wine cave earlier in case we needed to sit inside. While we did enjoy most of our meal on the vineyard terrace, Brian kindly invited us back to the cave to cap off the afternoon with dessert and sparkling wine. We parted ways with our new found friends, purchased some favorite wines, then set off on the road wondering how we were ever going to just be able to walk into an ordinary wine tasting room again and belly up to that crowded bar!

So there, dear readers, is the last of our Sonoma County exceptional wine tasting experiences. It was fun. It was indulgent. It gave us unique and up close opportunities to learn more about Sonoma County wines and sharpen our wine tasting skills. Impress your friends or impress your date. Guaranteed that any one of these five experiences will do the trick!

Hop Kiln 2012 North Bridge Chardonnay – Russian River Valley

This is HKG’s Sonoma County estate grown chardonnay and a good example of barrel fermented and Sur Lie aged wine. This chardonnay is fermented in French oak barrels, and a secondary fermentation also takes place in the barrel. The result is a lot of oak in the nose and the flavor. The wine is a solid gold color, lots of legs in the glass. It’s complex, smooth, medium bodied and well structured. The mouthfeel is creamy and I like that, but oak dominates the flavor and I’m not a big fan of that.

After tasting this one, I think I prefer less oak and more of the vanilla, butterscotch flavors you often see in the Russian River. My husband and tasting partner, Gary, however, loved the big oak in this chardonnay. 14.7% alcohol.

We purchased this at the winery and although I’m not crazy about their chardonnay, I do think the winery is beautiful and worth a visit.

We are headed back to Sonoma County for a special three days of extra special wine tastings and I’ll be blogging along the way. Stay tuned…