Bonny Doon Ca' del Solo Albariño 2007

Several decades in to the ongoing, evolving project that is Bonny Doon Vineyard, it looks they may finally be arriving at the most interesting place yet – and ironically, it’s an arrival that sort of predates the winery’s founding. By that I mean that they’re now trying to produce wine the way you would have done it a hundred years ago in France, except presumably with a few newfangled tricks such as refrigeration and proper hygiene.This wine is one of the first Demeter-certified biodynamic wines they’ve grown, and the complexity of it suggests (to me, at least) that they might well be onto something. This is a far cry from the weirdly plush, microbubbled oddities they’ve been crapping out for a while now; instead, what you get here is a beautifully light-colored wine with a floral nose that’s oddly like what I imagine Portuguese laundry detergent might smell like: rose petals and generic “clean” with an edge of cucumber.In the mouth, this is fatter than you’d expect, with a finish that tapers off quickly to reveal a note of crushed seashells and faded lemon rind. Before it goes, it’s a sort of dilute orange blossom honey note you’ve got along with, well, a sort of drying minerality. It’s fairly distinctly itself, whatever that is, and as such it gets two big thumbs up from this drinker. I only wish I had a plate of fresh oysters to accompany it.

Price: US $20
Closure: Stelvin
Date tasted: July 2008

2 thoughts on “Bonny Doon Ca' del Solo Albariño 2007

  1. At first I thought it was some weird NZ sauv blanc–the citrus is there, but where’s the passionfruit and the grass? And what’s with the viscosity?

    And then I found (like you did!) that it has a nice long temporal arrangement of flavors–a white wine not for sipping, but for contemplating in a light, daydreamy sort of way, on a warm and not-too-humid July evening.

    But nothing too serious.

  2. The wine was pleasant. It has a light taste at first, hits a high citrus note and finshes off strong but nicely. A good solid wine with little complexity other than its solid character. Maybe a bit overpriced. And I’m not sure I’d want to serve it to a group of discriminating wine fans as it is fairly straightforward.

    October, 2008 Wine Snaffler

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