Don's Gillette's Weekly Wine Blog
Weekly musings from our store's resident wine guru
Don has over thirty years experience in the wine industry. For the last eighteen years his attention has been focused on the growing local industry. Don has a large following of customers who search out his opinions (never in short supply!) on new releases and on what's currently most distinctive on our shelves. Others seek his insights on wineries and trends that are still under the radar. Check back here each week for Don's latest thoughts on various wine-related topics. Read Don's full bio...
Email Don directly with your wine-related questions.
A Lament for Lost Apples, sort of... [Part two]:
The barrels of Chardonnay we tasted at Chasseur were delicious and notable for length of aftertaste, although most fell short of the near-perfection Bill Hunter achieved in 2005. A barrel of Durrel Vineyard (usually tight upon release) was surprisingly forward and charming; the Sangiacomo was leaner and crisper than usual, but very long, the Bertoli Vineyard (RRV) sample was both weighty and zesty, with lots of white peach. The star was the Lorenzo, with a flinty backbone and exotic candied lemon peel and honeycomb complexities like a Corton-Charlemagne. Not much to declassify here!
Bill may plan more declassification amongst the Pinot barrels, but there were plenty of fine ones to taste, including two from new vineyard sources. A sample of Terra de Promisso from the Sonoma Coast, was packed with Italian cherry, raspberry, boysenberry and red rose. We tried three barrels from Umino Vineyard on Blucher Valley road in the RRV, Each from a different clonal lot: clone 667, a blast of cherries, Mr. Lincoln roses and orange zest, reminded me of Bill's 2004 Joyce Pinot; clone 777 was dark, smoky and leathery, over lots of boysenberry; clone 459 had a red fruit orientation, with yellow rose, red plums, crabapple syrup, boysenberry and orange peel all playing a part.
A barrel from the Blank Road Vineyard, first introduced last year, was bright and floral to the nose, powerful and full of cherries on the palate and long and racy at the finish.
My favorite among Chasseur's '04 and '05 reserve-level Pinots has been the Freestone Vineyard bottling, yet all of those wines were brilliant, so we will need to see what time achieves in the cellar before we really try to rank them. We tried two barrels of '06 Freestone: clone 115 was citric-edged but of exquisite elegance, with yellow rose, red plum and wild cherry flavors; clone 777 had a darker, smokier character, with Italian cherry, plum, red and yellow rose and some Oriental spice hints. There was certainly nothing to declassify in this group either!
I live in San Francisco's Sunset District, the windy west-side, and a Gravenstein apple tree struggles to give me a dozen or so apples each season. The whole crop sits right now in a bowl on my dining table. They are tasty and I will miss them when they are gone -- but not all that much.
