Our Wine Advent-ure: Day Nine

Heading into the second week of working our way through the Advent Wine Calendar our adult children so thoughtfully gave us at Thanksgiving.

Over the weekend, we tried three different wines, which were decent to downright great, as we reported yesterday. We approached Monday’s offering with mixed feelings, as the wine for the 10th day of Advent was a Brillo Solar Chardonnay from northern California’s Alexander Valley.

Why “mixed emotions”? When we lived in Sacramento, we visited the Alexander Valley fairly often and enjoyed many fines wines from that area. Chardonnays were not usually among them. 

While we have enjoyed unoaked chardonnays - usually from outside the U.S. -- we feel the same way as the character Miles from the wine-focused movie "Sideways," who said, "I like all varietals. I just don't generally like the way they manipulate Chardonnay in California -- too much oak and secondary malolactic fermentation."


But "Sideways" was from 2004, and both tastes and wine production practices have changed since then. 

A Certified Sommelier Level 2 who writes LarrytheWineGuy.net* observed in 2012 that, “American palates are leaning towards Burgundian Style Chardonnays with less alcohol, minimal oak (if any) and lighter crisp styles of Chardonnay that you can actually taste the crisp fruit and be refreshed instead of swallowing an oak tree and snorting a blast of vanilla extract when sniffing the wine.” You can read the full article here.

So … twisting the top, we poured, swirled, sniffed, and were at once pleasantly surprised and underwhelmed.

Gone were the buttery, oaky notes of the early 21st century Chards, but this particular wine was extremely light; lighter than any Chard we've tried before. On the nose was a very light -- almost indiscernible -- scent of lemon. Sipping this very light-colored wine, two predominant flavors came through: lemon and minerality.

Rather than pair with dinner, we snacked on bleu cheese, Cougar Gold cheddar and apple slices.  The wine complemented each of them nicely and the pairings were better than the wine alone, which left me wondering if I'd missed my mouth. It's not one I'd hunt down because it didn't have enough to offer on its own.

Tomorrow, another tasting! Stay tuned.

Visit my main page at TheTravelPro.us for more news, reviews, and personal observations on the world of upmarket travel.

Photos by Carl Dombek
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* Editors note: Larry is a Level 2 Sommelier who lives in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida and is available for wine sales positions.

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