This is the kind of wine that gets me in trouble.
Not because it’s difficult to review, or because it’s getting a particular score (good, bad, or mediocre), or because a friend makes it or I like the people at the winery, or anything like that.
This is going to make me look like a snob.
This is the kind of wine that if you ask people at a wine shop, they not only won’t have it (it’s primarily sold at restaurants), but they may give you the stinkeye if you say you like it. I’m not here to do that. I still believe to each their own, and that just because I don’t like the wine doesn’t mean someone else can’t. I still believe that. But this is really crappy wine.
The 2009 Salmon Creek California Chardonnay (they also make a more regionally-specific Napa Valley chard, but this is not that) starts off just fine, it glows ever-so-faintly in the glass, a pretty light yellow straw. On the nose is some red apple (not nearly as bright and clean-smelling as a green apple note would be) and some wood.
Did I mean “oak”? No, interrupting reader, I did not. I meant “wood.”
The wine is medium-bodied and shows off an astonishingly high amount of heat for a wine that clocks in at 12.5%. There’s no balance here. What fruit notes are here are very tart apple, and not much else. More wood notes (still doesn’t come off like “oak” to me, really).
All in all, blecch.
Verdict: 71/100