Tag Archives: Napa Valley

Beringer Chardonnay, Napa Valley 2004

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Opening the bottle is about the same as opening that giant can of Libby’s fruit cocktail they’d serve when you were back in elementary school: it smells like pears and cheap corn syrup… not that there’s anything wrong with that, mind you. There’s also a whiff of something like sulfur dioxide, and some sort of generic oak note (barrel fermentation?), but not a particularly strong one: it smells clean and nonoffensive, like it should be served in a Tokyo pâtisserie.Medium-weight in the mouth, there’s a not particularly appealing woodiness about it (low level TCA taint?), a slight sweetness, and very little interest. The finish is short and perfunctory.Overall, this wine is probably best bought for the tasteful label – just not for the wine itself.BeringerPrice: US $11.99Closure: CorkDate tasted: December 2007

Napa Family Vineyards Napa Valley Finest Selection Reserve Chardonnay 2005

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You know, the label on this wine practically gives me carpal tunnel just typing it in… Anyhow, on to another of Tesco Finest, er Napa Family Vineyards’ blah blah blah wines…Curiously enough, this wine smells like the nursing home my Aunt Emma lived in towards the end of her life. There’s a very old-ladies-in-wheelchairs floweriness here – kind of like a Laura Ashley boutique just opened shop at the bottom of my glass. It’s surprising mostly because this isn’t something I smell a lot of in my life, especially not in wines I buy. Anyhow: it’s basically a mix of nasturtium, lavender, rosemary honey, and some French oak (?) in the background.In the mouth, the wine is big, rich, round, and fat, ending in a very spicy note. It’s unusual for a mass market California chardonnay in that the movie theater butter note doesn’t spring itself on you until the very finish: it’s overall far spicier than buttery, which is, I suppose, a refreshing change from the usual. Even so, it’s not terribly complex, with nothing (that I can tell) coming from wild yeasts, lees stirring, or other techniques that might increase the interest.To sum up, it’s a decent enough wine. It thankfully doesn’t show the banana-pineapple flavors you often find in wines at this price, and the flowery spiciness could be highly attractive to some folks. Most importantly, it delivers enough at its price point and the bottle looks quite nice (once you peel off the SPECIALLY SELECTED BY fresh&easy label).Napa Family Vineyards [but really fresh&easy]

Price: US $9.99
Closure: Diam
Date tasted: December 2007

Napa Family Vineyards Napa Valley Finest Selection Reserve Merlot 2004

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Pencil shavings, olive, and strawberries dominate the nose of this wine; it’s not too shabby, but it never really seems to evolve much beyond fruitiness with an oak undertone. It’s kind of like Kool-Aid mixed with wood chips.

In the mouth, this wine seems frankly way too sweet for a Napa merlot – and it’s not sucrosité, but residual sugar I think I’m tasting here. Ewww, gross – there’s barely any acidity here at all, and the overall effect is thoroughly unpleasant. However, the tannins are fairly interesting: finely grained and almost Australian in style, they seem flown in from a much better wine. Sadly, though, the bulk of the wine just hangs there limply in the mouth, waiting for you to swallow so that you can move on to something else. In terms of flavor, there’s some indeterminate milk chocolate but that’s about it, and there’s not much in the way of length here either: once the wine’s gone, the flavor’s gone. It’s all very disappointing. I imagine this is precisely the wine Miles was talking about in Sideways – and I probably should have heeded his advice.

Napa Family Vineyards [but really fresh&easy]
Price: US $10.99
Closure: Diam
Date tasted: November 2007

Cameron Hughes Lot 48 Meritage 2005

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Whoa. Clouds of rich, dark chocolate, bulldust, and black olive billow up in the glass, and there’s an almost perfumed character to the wine, with a slight sweetness – it’s not unlike vetiver or sage, albeit with a lovely, restrained edge. The color’s a lovely, dark purple with nearly visible particles towards the rim; it just looks expensive, somehow.

On the palate, the first thing that strikes me is the lovely texture: firm and round, followed shortly by flavor that I can honestly only describe as delicious. There are tastes of cassia, Kalamata olive, and cassis, and it all trails off into a clean finish with hints of tannin, acid, and a lovely sweetness, almost like violet pastilles mixed in with tahini. Best of all, the finish keeps going for a while, not resolving itself; it’s a fine drink.

Cameron Hughes
Price: US $9.99
Closure: Diam
Date tasted: November 2007

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For you Aussies out there, Meritage is American for “Bordeaux blend,” more or less. This also marks the first time I’ve seen an American wine closed with a Diam technical cork, which is awesome. Finally, it may interest you to know that we don’t have cleanskins – but Cameron Hughes is pioneering what y’all would call cleanskins in the US market. If you’re in the USA, you can probably find one or two of them at your local Costco, and they also do mail order (their Lot 39 Shiraz Viognier from the Barossa is probably the most incredibly fun $10 wine I’ve had this year).