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MORE CHARDONNAYS
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SONOMA CUTRER
 This
winery was created specifically to focus on Chardonnay. The project
was started by Brice Jones in the 1970s, planting Chardonnay vineyards in
the Windsor area of Sonoma, as well as in Sonoma Valley.
We were amongst the first people to see this amazing facility with its
various innovations. Winemaker Bill Bonetti had been part of the
design team and his input was heard by the architects. I recall
seeing a conveyor belt for "sorting" many years before this sort
of thing was common here in California. They also chose to pick into specially-designed
boxes which could be quickly chilled to allow the fruit to start its journey
towards being wine at a low temperature.
Bonetti was amongst the early winemakers to "whole cluster press"
his Chardonnay. Now you hear radio ads for Chardonnays from huge
wineries which routinely "whole cluster press" their wine.
While the wines have been nice and sometimes very fine, this firm has had
its ups and downs in terms of marketing.
Five Chardonnays are currently produced, but sales of these are restricted
until someone determines they're not selling quickly enough. It's
really a quirky system.
The basic Chardonnay is a twenty-buck bottle called "Russian River
Ranches." This is their "entry level" wine, being a
nice, mildly appley, lightly citrusy dry white.
Russian River Ranches is no longer offered to wine stores...this is to allow
restaurants to ask a small fortune and have a wine that's
"exclusive." It would typically retail at $20 a bottle.
Replacing the Russian River Ranches in the retail market is a wine called
"Sonoma Coast" Chardonnay. We passed on early vintages and
do not have this wine in the shop presently.
The Cutrer Vineyard wine is a Russian River Valley wine. I find notes
of ripe pear and a touch of wood...dry...medium-bodied. Very nice,
actually.
Les Pierres comes from a rocky vineyard on Sonoma Mountain. It's a
marvelous wine for those who are in tune with the wine. For the rest
of the world, it's a simple, light, dry white wine. Too bad.
Some years ago some marketing genius determined it would be best to focus
sales of the Russian River Ranches wine to restaurants and "allow"
stores such as ours to buy The Cutrer and Les Pierres from time to
time. Many customers, of course, don't hear the whole Sonoma Cutrer
story when dining out, so they amble into the shop, see the $30-$40 bottles
of the single vineyard wines and think we must be gouging customers since
they paid "only" $30-something for the wine they had in a
restaurant.
 Meanwhile,
other customers who DO know there are multiple levels of Chardonnay, come in
asking for Russian River Ranches. This had been available to us only when
the moon and stars align in a particular fashion. It's either that or
the wine is starting to trickle over the "dam" and then someone
gives the signal to go ahead and let "retailers" have a shot at
buying this wine. It pained the marketing crew at the winery, I am
certain, when this happened.
One year we were told there was no Russian River Ranches for our shop and I
sent the founder, Brice Jones, a nice letter asking him to kindly send us a
list of wines he'd suggest as substitutes for Sonoma Cutrer. This
would alert customers to the fact the winery was still in business and give
them a tip on an alternative. Two cases of wine arrived the following
week, though I never did hear from Brice.
The original shareholders grew interested in cashing out on their investment
and the these shares were eventually purchased by the Kentucky liquor
company of Brown-Forman. This is the same firm which now owns brands
such as Fetzer, Jekel and imports Bolla wines, sells Jack Daniels, as well
as Lenox China and Hartmann luggage. The firm finally
fired "poor" Brice Jones and today you won't find a mention of his name on the
winery web site. Not even on the "history" page.
Winemaker Bill Bonetti is still mentioned, however.
A new Chardonnay has been released. It's called Founder's
Reserve. Someone from the winery even came by the shop to show us a
fact sheet of this wine. It's apparently "too precious" to
allow us to actually taste the wine since production is small and the price
is high.
"You sell it on the reputation of Sonoma Cutrer." we were told by
the sales rep (who didn't even leave a card, not wanting us to pester him
asking for cases of Russian River Ranches).
"Not on my reputation." I replied.
The distributor's representative and the winery rep departed, in search of
more important customers, restaurant wine buyers.
I was later told by the distributor rep that I was the only person who
understood the quality of the wine and had an interest in buying them.
The restaurant buyers found the wines too simple or not rich enough (big,
flabby or even slightly sweet) to offer them to their guests. But of
course, we are but a mere "retailer" and not as high a profile
place as Barney's Beanery down the street.
Currently in stock: 2004 Russian River Ranches $19.99 Sold
Out
2004 The Cutrer Vineyard SALE $29.99
2004 Les Pierres (list $41) SALE $37.99
2003 Les Pierres in magnum (list $80) SALE
$69.99
- P & M STAIGER
 Paul and Marjorie Staiger have been cultivating a few acres of grapes and
making small quantities of Santa Cruz Mountains wines since the 1970s, yet
few have heard of this winery.
This is due, in part, because Paul and Marjorie prefer it that way...they
are not promoters or marketing folks. They like living in an obscure
location and being away from the crowds. Winemaking is low-tech and
they ferment the juice in stainless steel at low temps before transferring
the wine to French oak (about 30% new barrels). Though we find a smoky
note reminiscent of lees contact, the Staigers rack the wine fairly often
during its time in wood to clarify and clean up the Chardonnay.
After oak aging, the wine is returned to stainless steel to allow it to rest
and, perhaps, develop further.
Staiger Chardonnay is made from the Wente clone (of Chardonnay vines) and
there's a nice appley note along with the toasty, woodsy elements.
This is bone dry and crisp...somewhat along the lines of a premier cru or
grand cru Chablis, in fact.
We're big fans of this style of Chardonnay. It's quite different from
typical California wine and appeals to those more in tune with French wines
than the average consumer of California wine.-
- Currently in stock: 2007 STAIGER Santa Cruz Mountains
CHARDONNAY $26.99
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STONY HILL VINEYARD This
winery was the model for dozens of Napa Valley cellars in terms of its
"cult following" back in the 1960s and 1970s...the fact that they
sold wine exclusively to friends on their mailing list and a handful of
dining establishments...and that they were, once-upon-a-time, widely
regarded as the best Chardonnay in California.
The Stony Hill story begins in the 1940s when Fred and Eleanor McCrea, who
lived, I believe, in Hillsborough, purchased an old piece of a hillside
where someone kept goats, had a few fruit trees and grew a bit of
wheat. It was their "weekend getaway" home, except getting
away during World War II, with gasoline rationing, was a bit difficult.
Fred worked for an advertising agency in San Francisco and was in love with
the place. The wine business was tiny in Napa in the 1940s and yet
they had some friends who encouraged them to plant grapes. U.C. Davis
experts suggested Pinot Blanc and Riesling, but McCrea was enthralled with
the notion of Chardonnay. The university gurus didn't think Chardonnay
would ripen, but McCrea stuck to his guns and planted some anyway, adding a
small parcel to the state total of 225 acres. ((Today there are more
than 90,000 acres of Chardonnay.))
Riesling is still made and I can tell you, we opened a bottle of a 15 year
old Stony Hill in 2008 and this was amazing with a capital
"A." They used to sell those grapes to Lee Stewart who had a
small, boutique winery across the valley called Souverain. He was the
leading Riesling-meister. A former BV associate named Joe Heitz bought
Chardonnay grapes when the fellows at the Christian Brothers Winery refused
to pay a premium price for these higher-than-usual-quality grapes. The
going rate was $40 a ton and not a penny more!
McCrea knew he had good fruit and was a bit sad to see it blended away into
anonymity at Christian Brothers, so he started making his own. They
built a small winery in 1951 and a few years later entered their wine in the
state fair, winning a gold medal. Word spread about this lovely and
exclusive wine and by the 1970s you had to be on the mailing list to buy
Stony Hill wines.
I went to visit them and have a taste in the early 1970s...Fred and Eleanor
were sweet people and enjoyed reminiscing about their days in the Burlingame
and Hillsborough communities.
Fred had a bit of help with the winemaking from a fellow who'd worked at
Beaulieu, though this guy was mostly a vineyard expert. He could tap
friends such as Stewart and Heitz for help if he needed guidance. They
used to have high school kids in Napa come help during the harvest and later
it dawned on them that they could get a UC Davis enology student to come
work the harvest since school didn't begin until well into
October.
The roster of "kids" who worked for the Mcreas is impressive...Jed
Steele who now owns Steele winery was a Stony Hill staffer. So was Ric
Forman who has Forman winery. Hank Wetzel, whose family owns Alexander
Valley Vineyards worked at Stony Hill. So did chocolate-meister John
Scharffenberger and John Konsgaard!
But the fellow who worked the vineyards after a stint at Sterling (in its
early days) was Mike Chelini. He's still the winemaker and has more
than 30-something vintages under his belt.
Stony Hill still makes wine using their old, classic recipe. They've
not changed to be more fashionable and make wines for today's Chardonnay
drinker. The juice comes from estate-grown grapes. It's
fermented in old, rather neutral French oak barrels and they do not allow
the wine to undergo a malolactic fermentation. In fact, they filter
the wine to be sure it's stable and doesn't undergo a secondary
fermentation.
The idea at Stony Hill is to make Chardonnay that tastes like it came from
the Stony Hill vineyard. And these wines, typically below 14% alcohol,
manage to age beautifully. In an era when the world demands
"instant gratification" and when so many people are so terribly
self-centered, it's nice to have a taste of wine from a time when the world
was a much simpler place.
This sort of wine will not please the legions of Kendall-Jackson fans or
those who find Rombauer's wine to be the height of sophistication. And
the wine, while it's perfectly nice in its youth, seems to blossom
handsomely with a bit of a very scare commodity: patience.
The 2006 vintage is in stock presently. This is a wine which tastes
"stony" as in Stony Hill. There's a flinty, minerally tone
to the wine along with the apple/pear notes of the Chardonnay. As I
write this, I've read an article by some "experts" who claim that
the notion of terroir and tasting the soil or vineyard is a bunch of
bunk. Maybe those people ought to try a glass of this Stony Hill
wine...it might make them change their tune.
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- Currently in stock: 2006 STONY HILL Napa CHARDONNAY $35.99
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- STUBBS VINEYARD
 Marin County is
not on the radar screens of most wine drinkers. How could this region
get much attention when there are but something less than a hundred acres of
vineyards being cultivated there? Imagine that in 1990 there
were but nine acres of commercial vineyards in Marin County. During
the recent "boom," they're up to 87 acres as of the most recent
census of the California Agricultural Statistics Service.
Tom Stubbs hails from Great Britain and made a few bucks locally in the real
estate business. He and his wife Mary purchased 600 acres of land north of
Point Reyes. They have planted a few acres of Chardonnay and Pinot
Noir. Schramsberg, the famous Napa Valley sparkling wine specialist, had
been buying their grapes.
The Stubbs enlisted the services of Dan Goldfield to do some winemaking and
today they vinify a bit of fruit. Organically farmed, too.
We're sure growing grapes in this area is challenging, but if future vintages
produce wines as good as their 2006 Chardonnay, that future is bright.
Here's a crisp, bone dry white which is elegant and refined. The wine
undergoes a full malolactic fermentation and is bottled after nearly a year in
wood. We like the appley fruit tones and the smoky, biscuity
notes.
- Currently in stock: 2006 Stubbs Marin County Chardonnay $28.99
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Robert TALBOTT VINEYARDS & WINERY
2005 Monterey "Sleepy Hollow" Chardonnay SALE $39.99
We can special order the other Talbott Chardonnays
for you...
 This is the same Talbott which produces some magnificent
neckwear! Talbott started in 1983 and is a Chardonnay specialist. The wines
used to have more strong oak influence and they seemed drier. Today's bottling of
their "basic" Chardonnay is softer, rounder and has a bit of sweetness.
The wines vary in style from year to year. It's almost as though
nobody is really in charge here and if they are, they're not paying much
attention. I inquired as to why the huge variation and was told by a
marketing fellow "We make what the vintage gives us."
I'm not a winemaker, but I would think producing a wine in a consistent
style would not be such a challenge.
The current offering is the 2005...
Four vineyards comprise this domaine. "Diamond T Ranch" is a
24 acre vineyard planted by Robb Talbott in the early 1980s. Normally
this vineyard yields a minuscule one ton per acre, making it a costly
endeavor.
"Sleepy Hollow" is Talbott's main vineyard, a 450 acre parcel west
of Gonzales in Monterey County's Santa Lucia Highlands. Talbott claims
to keep the best of its fruit for their own production, but we've tasted
some wines made by others which challenge Talbott in terms of
quality.
"River Road" is a vineyard surrounding Talbott's winemaking
facility. It is planted exclusively with Chardonnay.
"Del Mar" is a vineyard owned by Talbott, but all the fruit is
sold to other wineries.
The 2005 Talbott "Sleepy Hollow" bottling exhibits some tropical fruit notes and a touch of toasty oak and smoky elements. The
fruit is very intensely flavored and the wine is big and ripe. Though
it tips its cap to Burgundy, the wine is very much a
Californian. You usually don't find white Burgundy at 15%
alcohol!
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"Diamond T" is a bit more austere by comparison. This
bottling comes from their prized vineyard. It is barrel fermented and
left on the spent yeast for about a year. This contributes a more
toasty and smoky note to the wine. I find it a bit drier and prefer
its less fruity notes (compared to the Sleepy Hollow). The wine is
bottled and matured for more than a year in glass before it is released.
Their Cuvée Cynthia is seen from time to time. I can't offer a
comment on a current bottling, however. A few secondary labels are
bottled, too. These are more fruity in style and modestly
priced. They are available by special order.
- TALLEY VINEYARDS
- 2008 "Estate" Chardonnay $23.99
2005 "Rincon" Chardonnay $39.99
2006 "Oliver's" Chardonnay $31.99
 The Talley family produces
wonderful bell peppers and some pretty awesome Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Happily,
they keep everything separate, so you won't find a green pepper flavor in their
Chardonnay! Located in the Arroyo Grande appellation, north of Santa Barbara, this
is a fine producer of creamy, buttery Chardonnays.
The 2008 "Estate" is a wonderful example of Talley
Chardonnay. The fruit comes from their Rincon vineyard with a bit of
fruit from the slightly younger Rosemary's vineyard. This vintage saw
a rather small crop and Talley whole-cluster pressed the juice out of the
grapes. The juice is then fermented in oak, a portion of the lot being
fermented with the indigenous yeasts and the major segment fermented with a
special Burgundian yeast strain. Thirty percent new oak was
employed, giving the wine a nice vanillin, toasty note. Full
malolactic gives the creamy texture to the palate. Rich, without being
heavy, the new Talley is very fine. Very drinkable now!
The "Rincon" Chardonnay bottlings account for about three-percent
of the total production of this vineyard. A higher percentage of new
oak is used for the fermentation and the wine spends about 10 months in
barrel before being bottled without filtering. Very fine! Very
rare...
"Oliver's" comes from a 17 acre vineyard in the Edna Valley, north
of the winery. It's named after Talley Farms' founder, Oliver
Talley. Nicely oaked, fairly rich, creamy and mildly toasty, this is
an excellent example of California Chardonnay. Well-priced, too.-
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TESTAROSSA
Central Coast Chardonnays --
 The
name of this winery has nothing to do with Italian automobiles, but for
the red hair of co-owner Rob Jensen. The Jensens purchased the old
Novitiate Winery in Los Gatos near San Jose. I'm certain the old
Jesuits would be stunned to taste the wines being made by the Testarossa
crew! Here these old guys made very standard table wines and
some mildly-interesting fortified wines (Black Muscat,
especially).
Here's an old ad the Brothers used to promote their wines:
"Nothing Less Than A Miracle Could Create A Finer Wine."
These guys needed divine intervention to make wines of exceptional
quality.
Nothing in stock presently...
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Other Distinctive Chardonnays
- ACACIA WINERY
2007 Carneros Chardonnay Special Sale
$15.99
-It's $20+ at the winery-
 The Acacia Winery was founded by some crazy guys who had been
associated with Freemark Abbey way back in the Dark Ages of the late 1970s. Today
the winery is owned by the Chalone Wine Group and it still features Chardonnay and Pinot
Noir from the Carneros region.
The 2007 is much like its predecessors: Very bright and appley, with
some toasty oak notes. It's a universally appealing wine, being
acceptable to fussy folks such as ourselves, but still finding applause from
those new to the world of wine drinking.
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- CAKEBREAD CELLARS
2008 Napa Valley Chardonnay List Price $44 SALE
$37.99
 Jack & Dolores Cakebread started back in 1973 with a
small vineyard and winery located on the St. Helena Highway across from Robert Mondavi's
little cellar.
Things have grown, Cakebread today producing about 65,000 cases of
various wines.
The wines, to be perfectly blunt, are priced ambitiously and we think
they're expensive for what they are. But they've attracted a market
which is willing to pay the price. We stock them because many people
view the Cakebread label as the height of sophistication. -
- They obtain Chardonnay from a couple of
sites in the Napa Valley, combining the character of cool climate wine with
that of warmer region Chardonnay. These two pieces of the puzzle fit
together nicely. Woodsy and a bit high in alcohol, a popular
combination for many wine consumers these days...
They're also known for Cabernet, Sauvignon Blanc,
Zinfandel and Merlot.
- FAR NIENTE WINERY
2007 Napa Valley Chardonnay reg. $56 SALE
$44.99 (Magnums in stock now, too...$99.99)
 The
Far Niente Winery was established back in the 1880s and is located just south of Oakville
in the shadows of the Mayacamas Mountains. It's ironic that the wines cost so many
dollars when the place has been owned by someone named Nickel. Mr.
Nickel, by the way, died a year or so ago, after an illness.
"Far Niente" is
Italian for "expensive Napa Valley wines" and the
marketing philosophy here is "why pay less?" And this works
brilliantly for the Far Niente brand as we routinely see people buying this
wine as a show of sophistication. It's also a demonstration of
"conspicuous consumption."
Though our comments may be viewed as a bit derisive, we must say the
newly-released 2006 vintage is remarkably good and without question, our
favorite Far Niente Chardonnay of all time.
We are unsure as to whether the change in character of the 2006 is a
conscious decision or whether it's merely a "mistake" and won't
happen again. The 2007, though, is similarly styled...nice wine.
The wine is mildly smoky, showing some stony, minerally notes. I found
it to be a bit leesy and along the lines of some good French white Burgundy
wines. It has not undergone a malolactic fermentation, though.
Nice oak...toasted hazelnuts...dry and it's not a heavy or alcoholic
Chardonnay.
GRGICH HILLS
2006 Napa Valley List price $40 SALE
$35.99
2005 Napa Valley 375ml bottles Sold Out
2006 Napa Valley Magnums (list $90) SALE $79.99 Mike Grgich has
been a part of Napa Valley's wine "scene" for many years.
We first met this character when he was the winemaker at Chateau
Montelena. He made some extraordinary Chardonnays while he was at
Montelena. Those 1972 and 1973 vintages were absolutely stellar.
Grgich is a sharp fellow and always explained to anybody within ear-shot
that "The wines are richer than most because we have high alcohol
levels and this creates a 'sweet' texture on the palate that's not from
sugar." Imagine back in those days having to, essentially,
defend your wine style because it was bigger and all of about 13.5% alcohol
when today many California Chardonnays are harvested when the grapes weigh
in at a potential alcohol of 15+ percent!!!
He departed Montelena and joined Austin Hills (Hills Brothers Coffee) with a
little project along the St. Helena Highway in the northern part of
Rutherford.
Though he did much research on malolactic fermentations during his stint at
Beaulieu Vineyard under Andre Tchelistcheff, Grgich Hills Chardonnays
do not undergo any of this secondary fermentation.
Mike is a charmer, having an engaging smile and plenty of "B.S."
in his back pocket. He makes a nice style of lemony/pineappley
Chardonnay from Napa Valley fruit which shows but a modest amount of
wood.
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The 2006 vintage is a stellar example of his winemaking style,
which won't be mistaken for a top French white Burgundy, but it's good
"California Chardonnay." This is one of the few
Chardonnays in California which "tastes like Chardonnay." We
had guests from Europe in town and paired a bottle of Chardonnay with a crab
cake...a dynamite combination!
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Z-D WINES
2008 California Chardonnay list $32 SALE
$26.99
 We have fond memories of visiting the Zepponi and DeLeuze family winery on
Burndale Road in Napa back when this was a "garage" operation.
We were early supporters of this little enterprise, having purchased cloudy
Gewurztraminer and wildly exotic Pinot Noir. They also made Riesling
back in those early days.
Today it's
operated by the De Leuze family, Gino Zepponi having died in an auto
accident in the mid-1980s. Norm DeLeuze passed away in 2007, so both
pioneers are gone, but they live on in memory and spirit.
They left a very distinctive
"recipe" for their Chardonnay, blending fruit from the Central Coast with North
Coast grapes. American oak. No malolactic fermentation. The
resulting wine has a spicy, somewhat pineapple-like character, lovely for grilled seafood
or chicken.
The 2008 is the current offering.
This vintage shows the typical ZD "spice" from its exposure to
American oak barrels. The wine has the spicy, almost pineappley
character which typifies the ZD Chardonnays...very distinctive.
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- THE TERRACES
 Wayne Hogue
purchased The Terraces property at Quarry Vineyards back in the 1970s.
He planted a bit of Zinfandel and today also has some Cabernet Sauvignon
(Caymus used to buy their Cabernet)...Rutherford.
Today they make a couple of thousand cases of wine and we were pleasantly
surprised by a Chardonnay.
The grapes come from vineyards in Rutherford, also they're not owned by
Hogue. The fruit was pressed and the fermentation initiated in
tank. When the fermentation was nearly finished, the juice or wine was
transferred into old, rather neutral oak barrels to finish. No malolactic
was done as they're aware the acidity isn't especially high and the fruit
character would be compromised were this to have a buttery element.
After fermentation the spent yeast sediment was stirred once a week for half
a year. This contributed a nice 'toastiness' to the wine. The
fragrance is really special, here, though. It reminds us a bit of
fresh pears. Dry, soft, fruity and very fine...it's a great match for
sole.
Only a few hundred cases were produced and they had but a couple of barrels'
worth to sell here in Northern California...-
- Currently in stock: 2006 The TERRACES Napa CHARDONNAY $29.99
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