Unfussy Wine Enthusiasts | Wine Reviews & Articles

This Chardonnay was provided to us and is the vintage that followed our review here . As a follow-up to the 2010, we wanted to see how this one stacked up.  In the 2010 we found it to be a lot closer to a New World Chardonnay for a French wine.  This one was no different.  There is a lot of oak at play in both years and this was not a huge departure from the 2010.  The back label hasn't changed either and they still speak of hazelnut and toast.  We can get both, more hazelnuts than toast but toasty it is.  Very enjoyable. The look of the wine is a lot more golden in colour than the 2010 but there are still greenish tones in there.  We enjoyed the look as far as it was clear and bright but this is pretty standard stuff. The nose is clearly honeyed and has an oaky and peachy base.  It is really an attractive smell.  There might be a bit of a musty smell, but not in the bad wine being off way, more of a grandma's basement smell. ...

As promised we tasted this French Chardonnay this evening. To our surprise this had a lot more New World styling than we expected. There was a good amount of oak in the nose which indicated to me that this had gone through the Aussie treatment but this is not a buttery wine but more crisp and with tropical notes that you might find in a Sauvignon Blanc. There is almost effervescence to the wine which gives it a small amount of tingle on the very tip of your tongue, quite nice. They also note on the back label hints of hazelnut and toast which we do get on the palate but not with as much force as the winemakers may have indicated. Overall this is a very drinkable Chardonnay and not necessarily just for the warmer weather days. This has the body to be a Winter white wine. That said, we are attempting to come up with an abbreviated version of our normal tasting notes (which if you have ever seen them require some reading time). So, we are going to debut a quick version that will hopef...