Maybe a year ago a friend of mine--himself a neo-enophile--was raving about a Chardonnay he had. "I'm not crazy about Chardonnay but I really liked this one; I'd be interested in knowing what you think.
Caveat--As I have written numerous times, at the end of the day, enjoying wine is enjoying what YOU like even if it's plonk. For the sake of my friend who is learning his way around the vineyard so to speak, I have taken more time in describing and qualifying my review.
Here goes--Real time review: Nice golden hue to it, with strong vanilla citrus, tropical fruit aromas that exude a fruity, candy-like sweetness.
Palate--Really racy acidity that stimulates your parotid glands (just below your ears these glands secrete saliva to aid in digestion...I knew you'd want to know that.) This is what would be called a juicy wine!
Okay the subjective critique--This IS an enjoyable wine and I for one love a wine with vibrant acidity. The bouquet on this wine is nice and I like it. The taste is also enticing as a generic, inexpensive Chardonnay--under $10.
The objective critique--There is a sense of manufacturedness to this wine. This is pretty much the norm for wines--especially Chards--in this price range. (NW) of this blog insists that these wines are all made in a laboratory off the highway in New Jersey where huge warehouses of petri dish flavors and aromas are created for all artificial food stuffs we consume. Okay, he's not serious but he has a point. As Gaiter and Brecher, formerly of the Wall Street Journal used to write--"There's no sense of place with these wines." And that's the trouble. They're consumable even tasty--sort of--but when you have had real wine with real character with real identity, you know what I mean. That's not being snobby, that's being real. This tastes like the other 10,000 inexpensive chards out there today. Also--this wine is 5 years old which is quite old for this class of wine. It probably presented much better 2-3 years ago! At any rate Thomas--raise a glass!
BTW--This wine gets the best label design award I've seen in a long time!
Just gone through the review of Jenica Peak California Chardonnay 2005 wine and found it wonderful. you have covered everything beautifully.
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