Archive for category White
2007 Vertikal Gewürztraminer
Posted by Seth in 86-90, Gewürztraminer, White on 15 December 2009
I like gewürztraminers.
Beyond the fact that I think that a good gewürztraminer is as good as a white wine can get, there’s something about them that seems to work well with the holiday season – sort of spicy, sort of fruity. When everything works, a rather complex set of multiple elements can come together without actually seeming complex, and all of that with the basic crispness of a white. Somehow that seems appropriate for Christmas, though – a holiday that should be deep but, quite often, is shallow (and generally has all the basic crispness of a family argument).
Or something like that.
This year I did try to be a touch more ambitious than I was last year, actually going so far as to spend all of $10. For my ambition, I was rewarded with a 2007 Vertikal Gewürztraminer – a German wine with a screw top. Neither of those really are things that give one confidence.
My initial impressions were about what one would expect from a $10 bottle of wine: not good, but not bad. The smell is especially nonexistent – really, it would be tough to distinguish a glass of this wine from a glass of water when blindfolded. Taste, luckily, was a touch more memorable. The normal citrus fruits one would expect from a white are there (and are certainly in abundance) with pear especially noticed. Almost no spicy elements, though, make it through – vague hints exist, but nothing well controlled or well-proportioned to match the expansive fruit tastes. The combination of these two
The problem, then, is not a lack any particular element, but the fact that the Vertikal never manages to become the sum of its parts, let alone more than that. That said, it is not bad by any means – and, at $10, I would even go so far as to call it a good value.
Score: 88
Columbia Crest Two Vines – 2006 Chardonnay
Posted by Lisa in 76-85, Chardonnay, White, Wine on 13 December 2009
On the menu tonight was some healthy risotto, which meant a bottle of white to go in said risotto. I picked this one up because 1) it was cheap, and 2) I’m sort of new to the chardonnay, so I’m still unfamiliar with even the low-level, buy-at-a-Wal-Mart chardonnay. I’ve had a couple of cheap chardonnays as of late, and I must say, cheap chardonnays are really similar. And I like them.
Thing is, I’m not sure if I’m supposed to like them. Are they actually good and just don’t cost that much, or are they not very good and for whatever reason, my palette seems to respond to them? Sure, cheap chardonnays are perhaps a little too sweet and lack the alcoholic kick and are generally unremarkable, but they just go down easy. So on to this wine: hint of oak, strong apple flavor, and not much lingering on the finish. Nothing that makes you think. Nothing really new about wine. But all the same, pleasant to drink. Oh, and at the very least, it won’t ruin either your risotto or your bank account ($6).
Because I feel like there must be more to the chardonnay than this, I’m going to score it low, but really, it’s not so bad to drink.
Score: 84
Brancott Reserve Sauvignon Blanc
Posted by Matt L in Sauvignon Blanc, White, Wine on 12 December 2009
I picked up a bottle of this New Zealand wine at Costco for about $14. Great buy. It has amazing grapefruit and lemongrass flavors with a nice acidity. I was hoping to save this bottle to share at my Christmas Bash but…didn’t happen. A nip here, a glass there and the next thing you know its gone.
Whites probably don’t come to mind during the winter months but this one is perfect for the holidays. Enjoy!
Gruet Brut, New Mexico
If you’re going to celebrate a holiday, you might as well do it right. And for me, that means choosing a sparking wine. Your go-to cabs and naked chards are a dime a dozen throughout the year. It doesn’t make much sense to spend gobs of cash on a plane ticket or hours in traffic along the Eastern Seaboard and pair those Thanksgiving goodies with the same grape juice from a run of the mill Friday night.
This year I left the Washington beltway and headed up to the bright lights of New York City to spend Thanksgiving with a friend. After an attempt to view the Macy’s parade, we took a stroll down to the avant guard Chelsea neighborhood. There, in the shadow of the newly-opened High Line park and the presence of faux-hawks and hipsters, we found Appellation, a wine shop opened on Thanksgiving and with a great inventory.
After requesting a good sparkling, the crew immediately sent us to the Gruet, a New Mexico wine, with a $15 price tag. It promised notes of toast, pear and apple. I was skeptical at first. Normally, I’m a big fan of Moet and Chandon’s White Star but I decided to give this budget sparking a stab.
The wine delivers on the major tastes. The pear and apple appear at the onset. There is also a nice mineral flavor to keep the sweetness down. Unfortunately, the wine presents that green unripe flavor too common in bargain sparklings. But unlike a Korbel, that flaw eventually gets lost in a nice toast flavor that keeps the bubbly flowing.
The wine held up well through appetizer, goat cheese and fig jam on water crackers, and the meal of turkey, pumpkin gnocchi, stuffing, cranberry salad and pecan pie. This was a great choice for pairing with the must-have pecan pie, cutting the sweetness and rising the mouth in between bites.
Though this wine could not entirely kick the green flavor, the longer the bottle was open, the less it was detected. The bottom line: a good buy for the recession Thanksgiving.
Score: 80
2008 Salvenal Albarino
The iconic wine of Spain is certainly red. We’ve seen the earthy Tempranillo and fruit forward Garnacha grapes find their way onto menus as Spanish food and wine take their place among urban foodies. And, of course, there is the ubiquitous red wine Sangria cocktail at summer barbeques and Jerry Jeff Walker concerts.
Though red dominates as the Spanish wine, the Iberian Peninsula also gives us respectable whites. The Basques, in Spain’s Northeast province, produce Txakoli, a light, fizzy white that matches perfectly with the region’s seafood tapas. But perhaps a more approachable and versatile Spanish white comes from the Albariño grape. These green pearls grow in Galicia, along Spain’s damp Northwest coast. The wine is known to be aromatic with flavors of almond paste, apple, peach, citrus and flower.
After hearing some chatter about the wine, I picked up a 2008 Salvenal Albariño at World Market. It was under $10 and right by the register. Who can resist? Before trying, I made sure the wine was ice cold, keeping it in the refrigerator for a few weeks.
First impressions matter and I like a real cork, not the synthetic plastic kind or a screw top. I’m not opposed to the burgeoning fine wine in a box culture but why not bring in some old world charm when you’re drinking by yourself on a cold and dreary fall night. Luckily, the Salvenal passes the test: real cork. Next, the pour: the wine has that unfortunate shade of yellow—almost lemon, but not quite. The smell was much more appealing. I could pick up the acidic zip right away, along with a grassy freshness and a slight tart note.
And now for the real test: the taste. This albariño is initially easy on the mouth and then opens up to a peach, supported by melon. So far, the wine is right in line with what to expect with peach and flower dominating. Yet, the flavor fades too quickly on a wave of acidic freshness. Read: flavorless. As the wine breathes, the peaches and melon evaporate and the flower begins to yield a taste evoking a hillside scene. The imagery of green hills, blue skies and open wilderness is outstanding but the flavor is much less so.
I’m not much of a pairing snob so I went ahead and paired the wine with dinner: a turkey chili. The high acidity helped to cut through the food yet not eliminate its flavor from the tongue. However, by the end of dinner, I didn’t want to drink the wine because it spoiled the food taste, turning into a kind of harsh lemon water.
Unfortunately, this albariño suffers the worst kind of wine fate: not good enough to pair with food or drink on its own. It seems as if this bottle is destined for refrigerator exile.
Score: 42
2007 Kendall-Jackson Vinter’s Reserve Chardonnay
Posted by Seth in 86-90, Chardonnay, White, Wine on 12 August 2009
As our new adventures in Chardonnay continued, we wanted to look at slightly higher-end wine – nothing terribly expensive, but something that took a few small steps above the $10 mark. Our subject, then, is a 2007 Kendall-Jackson Vinter’s Reserve Chardonnay – something that we paid about $13 at our local grocery store, but that you can likely find for a dollar or two cheaper elsewhere.
The most notable initial observation we had about the wine was that it does not have a very powerful aroma; a hint of grapefruit can, perhaps, be detected, but nothing overwhelming. The taste, though, is much more impressive, notes of several tropical fruits can be detected: pineapple and mango both standing out more than the rest.
What is so impressive about the Kendall – Jackson, though, when compared to the other bottles we have reviewed recently – is the fact that all of the elements are so controlled. With all of the other bottles we sampled, some element always managed to get out of the overall fabric of the taste and detract from the elements around them. Not so with the Kendall-Jackson: multiple layers exist, and they are all freely available for the drinker to explore.
If the Ravenswood Vinter’s Blend Chardonay was an example of everything that tends to push us away from white wines – simple, tart, out of control – this bottle is a reasonable example of how a good Chardonnay can still be interesting enough to hold our attention.
Score: 88
Yellow Tail – 2007 Chardonnay
Posted by Jeff in 76-85, Chardonnay, White, Wine on 10 August 2009
Our white wine adventures continue.
Today we picked up two new Chardonnays, the less expensive of which was the ubiquitous Yellow Tail regular Chardonnay, which can generally be found for in the neighborhood of $6-7 a bottle. There are a couple of reasons why this wine is worth reviewing: first, it’s found literally all over the known universe anywhere white wines are sold. Second, the Yellow Tail Reserve Chardonnay is considered by people who claim to know a fairly good example, so the folks down under should at least know a little bit about making a decent tasting value wine as well.
First, this bottle has to be viewed in the context that it is one of the cheaper Chardonnays money can buy. It’s not meant to be a $20 bottle, and it doesn’t taste like it. Even compared against moderately more expensive ($9-10 bottles) wines, the Yellow Tail doesn’t quite have the same refinement. Slightly tart with melon tones and a hint of vanilla and an overall pleasing bouquet, this wine is a good value at the price point, but is a bit too loud to pay any more for.
My ultimate feeling on the Yellow Tail is that it’s a solid B. We don’t claim to be expert white wine drinkers, but I wasn’t at all disappointed with my purchase. Clearly better than the Ravenswood we reviewed, but not as good as the other slightly more expensive Chardonnays on the table, the Yellow Tail was a solid performer, but not more than that. If you’re looking for an inexpensive Chardonnay, this is one worth looking at.
Score: 82
Ravenswood – 2007 Vinters Blend Chardonnay
Posted by Jeff in 76-85, Chardonnay, White, Wine on 7 August 2009
Let’s start with a disclaimer: I generally like Ravenswood. A winery that boasts “no wimpy wines” is right in line with my philosophy – strong, bold flavors and powerful aromas are generally what I like in a wine. Since I’m staying with Seth this weekend, we decided to have one of our typical wine challenges, this time focusing on white wines, specifically Chardonnays. Things sort of degraded when we ended up with one wine we liked, and one we really didn’t.
Things didn’t look good for the Ravenswood right out of the bottle. That’s actually perhaps a bit of an understatement. The bottle we purchased yielded a slightly carbonated, very grapefruity, not all that enjoyable liquid that contained slight odors we could only associate with vomit. After roundly abusing the Ravenswood and moving on to our other Chardonnay and checking in on the Yankee/Red Sox game, we came back and tried to come up with something nice to say about a wine really didn’t like, only to discover that the time sitting out had mellowed the Ravenswood Chardonnay completely. The unpleasant odors had mostly vanished, but our overall impressions of the wine weren’t completely reversed. Still overly tart to our liking without a lot of complexity, it wasn’t completely awful to drink, but didn’t rise above the level of what we would consider to be a generic, cheap white wine.
We don’t consider ourselves to be Chardonnay experts, but honestly we can generally tell the difference between two glasses of wine set right in front of us, at least to the point where we can pick the one we like the most. The bottom line is that we would happily pay 3-4 dollars more for the Kendall-Jackson every day of the week. As much as we like Ravenswood Zin’s, we’d recommend you give this one a wide berth.
Score: 76
Bay Bridge Vineyards – Chardonnay
Posted by Jeff in 76-85, Chardonnay, White, Wine on 3 June 2009
My last Bay Bridge experience was, to put it mildly, one of the worst wines I’ve reviewed for this site. Only one bottle – and a likely skunked one at that – has a lower score. It was so bad, in fact, that I’ve had the other two bottles sitting in my closet for quite some time, hesitant to pull them out at all, but not wanting to open a bottle I’ll actually want to drink (read: enjoy) while processing pictures, I pulled out the second in the trilogy: the Chardonnay.
Shockingly, this wine isn’t bad. I won’t go so far as to say that it’s good, or even that I would buy it again, but I will certainly finish the glass, which is more than I can say for the Cabernet. The biggest problem this particular incarnation of Bay Bridge suffers from is its lack of character. Set next to a Yellow Tail Reserve (which I did once I realized it wasn’t truly awful), there’s no question of which wine is better. The Yellow Tail is bright and fruity while at the same time offering complex notes simply absent in the Bay Bridge. The Bay Bridge is slightly sweet, but comes off tasting almost more like grape juice than wine, though you certainly wouldn’t mistake the mistake.
What this is, then, is a 3 dollar wine I will actually save and use to cook with. Is it as good as a “real” Chardonnay? No. But it is passable, and in fact you would even recognize it as a Chardonnay in a lineup. While the Cabernet was not, the Chardonnay is, and while not a fantastic wine, it is a reasonable value. Now if only the Merlot will live up to the bar it sets…
Score: 76
Toad Hollow – 2007 Chardonnay
Posted by Lisa in 76-85, Chardonnay, White, Wine on 1 June 2009
So let me explain my purchasing thought process: “I want to try a white. Maybe something nice and fruity. A chardonnay? [at this point, I feel it proper to interject that I don't know much about white wines. At all.] Sure, there are lots of those. Ok, so which chardonnay… hmmm.. OMG THAT ONE HAS A FROG! It looks like the frog from frog and toad. Aww frog and toad were so cute – love them! Aww… I like the frog… ok, keep looking… No, the frog!” Needless to say, I walked out with the bottle with the precious frog that visually transported me back to my childhood.
So on to the wine. It isn’t fruity. Thing is, I don’t know if it’s supposed to be, because, as I noted earlier, I don’t know much about whites. But it does have a nice flavor. It’s a little acidy, which I think is different. One of their big things is that it isn’t aged in oak barrels, but I sort of like the character that oak provides. Anyway, I do think I’ve had whites that I have enjoyed more, but this one is certainly drinkable and enjoyable. And hey, it has a frog (or toad? what’s the difference anyway?).
Apologies for not knowing anything about white wines….. But at least I’m trying to remedy it, right?
Score (because it was drinkable, mildly tasty, and had a frog/toad label): 85