Archive for the 'Chardonnay' Category

Alawine.com Super Award Winning 07 Reserve Chardonnay

Published on June 5, 2010 in Chardonnay. 0 Comments

The Award-Winning Wine:
Reason for Reviewing:
Santa Barbara Winery 2007 Reserve Chardonnay earned a Platinum Medal at the 2010 Monterey Wine Festival and a Double Gold Medal award from the 2010 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition.

Noteworthy:
Santa Barbara Winery was the first winery in Santa Barbara County after prohibition. It would be more than ten years before a second winery opened; today, there are more than 100.

Winery Notes:
“…full-bodied and richly textured with complexity of flavor further enhanced by barrel fermentation. More than half of the fruit used was from vines aged 30 years and older.”

AlaWine Notes:
Santa Barbara Winery 2007 Reserve Chardonnay graces the glass as a medium straw-yellow color. Tropical and citrus aromas present to the nose. On the palate, rich flavors of passionfruit, apricot, and pineapple rush in in a smooth mouth, and sustain through a moderate acidity and buttery finish.

Bottom Line:
Santa Barbara Winery 2007 Reserve Chardonnay is a rich wine of some substance and substantial fruit. Smooth, flavorful, and fresh from start to finish. Both refreshing and satisfying. Suggested retail price is $22. Overall composite score: 95 points.

Wine Enthusiast Magazine Scores, July 2010

Published on May 25, 2010 in Chardonnay, Lafond Winery, Pinot Noir, Santa Barbara Winery, Santa Brabara Winery Resrve Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Wine News and Winery News. 0 Comments

 

 

 

 

90 Santa Barbara Winery 2008 Sauvignon Blanc (Santa Ynez Valley); $15. A beautiful Sauvignon Blanc that shows why this warmish Santa Barbara County valley is such a natural home for the variety. With crisp acidity and a creamy texture, it’s dry and minerally, with interestingly rich flavors of citrus fruits, melons and pears, and a touch of smoky oak. Editors’ Choice. —S.H.

87 Santa Barbara Winery 2008 ZCS (California); $13. This blend of Zinfandel, Carignane and Sangiovese probably tastes like the red wines the immigrants drank years ago. It’s bone dry and rustic and clean and pure, with modest alcohol. Wash it down with salumi, pasta marinara, or just a plain roast chicken.—S.H.

92 Santa Barbara Winery 2007 Reserve Chardonnay (Sta. Rita Hills); $22. This is an elaborate, oaky Chardonnay made in the popular style that has made California Chard such a success. It’s rich in pineapple jam, apricot, buttered toast, vanilla and leesy flavors, and grows better as it warms in the glass. —S.H. 

 90 Lafond 2007 SRH Chardonnay (Sta. Rita Hills); $22. Good price for such a nice Chardonnay from the Santa Rita Hills. The wine is very dry and crisp in acidity, with a bracing mouthfeel that offers rich, oak inspired flavors of pineapples, pears and green apples. Nice now with Ahi tuna tartare or grilled salmon. —S.H.

 90 Lafond 2006 Pinot Noir Lafond Vineyard (Sta. Rita Hills); $48.This is a big, ripe, full-bodied and oaky Pinot Noir. It’s too powerful to drink now, unless you don’t mind immaturity. The raspberry, cherry and blood orange flavors are of the pie-filling type,and the oak sticks out in smoky, vanilla sweetness. Give it 4–5 years in the cellar to come around. Cellar Selection. —S.H.

Reserve Chardonnay 2007 Wins at the Monterey Wine Competition

Published on April 8, 2010 in Chardonnay. 0 Comments

2007 Santa Barbara Winery Reserve Chardonnay wines Platinum Medal at the 2010 International Monterey Wine Competition, 17th Annual

We are an international wine competition, and were among the first of the major U.S. wine competitions to open our elevations to wines from across the globe.

Once again we have assembled a select team of wine professionals to judge the 2010 submissions our judges come from across the spectrum of the wine industry, including winemakers, restaurateurs, sommeliers, journalists and wine marketers.

It has long been our policy to encourage judges to set aside taste preferences and evaluate the wines before them based upon the quality of the finished wine—regardless of the style. This is more important now than ever before because of the increased emphasis on wines that reflect terroir and regional typicity.

 
WHITE VARIETAL CHARDONNAY
Platinum Santa Barbara Winery 2007 Chardonnay, Reserve Sta. Rita Hills $22.00
To order wine: Santa Barbara Winery

Big Girls, Small Kitchen Blog Post on SB Chard Wine Pairing

Published on February 16, 2010 in Chardonnay and Joanie Hudson. 1 Comment

My dear friend Phoebe Lapine has a great blog on cooking / creating dining experiences / food and wine pairing.  She recently visited and we had the opportunity to taste through various stages of white wine fermentation down at Santa Barbara Winery (she visited during Harvest 2009).  I sent her home with a bottle of 07 Santa Barbara Winery Chardonnay, and in a Phoebe-like fashion, she created a fantastic recipe to pair with the wine.

Here is the link to her website (Big Girls, Small Kitchen: A Guide to Quarter Life Cooking) with the posting.  I recommend checking out her site as it is a truly voyeuristic glimpse into the her life experiences through cooking.  She is working on a book, and I can’t wait to read it when it comes out.  I love her use of the phrase ‘quarter life cooking.’

Her post also really hits home for me because I truly believe that wine better experienced when there is a real story behind it.  That story can include and interesting history, personal experiences with the wine, or having friends who have their hands in the production process.

2007 Santa Barbara Winery Chardonnay

We washed this meal down with a bottle of Chardonnay I brought back from my day trip to Santa Barbara. My friend Joanie works for the winery and took me through the whole process of how this particular chardonnay was made. Things always taste a little better once you understand where they came from, but regardless, this is a delicious mid-level wine, and one I will be buying again in the near future.

Joanie Hudson, Director of National and International Marketing, Santa Barbara Winery / Lafond Winery & Vineyards

07 Reserve Chardonnay Wins Double Gold at SF Chronicle Wine Competition

Published on January 22, 2010 in Chardonnay, Santa Barbara Winery and Winery News. 0 Comments

On January 8th, 2010, the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition concluded the annual week of judging at the Cloverdale Citrus Fairgrounds in Sonoma County, California. Over five days, 63 professional wine experts within the media, restaurant and hospitality, education, winemaking and retail wine industries tasted and evaluated a world-record breaking 4,913 entries, a number that maintains the competition’s status as the largest competition of American wines in the world.

Consumers can look forward to tasting the Sweepstake Award Winners, along with hundreds of additional wines, at the 2010 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition Public Tasting, February 20th held at Fort Mason Center’s Festival Pavilion in San Francisco. The Public Tasting is an annual celebration allowing wine lovers to compare their favorites to the top picks announced at the judging while enjoying great food and breathtaking views.

The Double Gold Medal is a fantastic judge of quality, as each and every judge has to unanimously give the wine a Gold score. 
Suggested retail: 22.00/750ml
To order: Santa Barbara Winery

San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition

Home for Monster Wines as Crowd-Pleasers

Published on December 11, 2009 in Chardonnay. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Here is a fun article that mentions and recommends our 2007 Santa Barbara Winery Chardonnay…

Find a Home for Monster Wines as Crowd-Pleasers

Big, chewy monster wines have a place in just about any wine lovers repertoire. These high-alcohol, jammy wines might not be your best friend at the dinner table, but wines that sport a decent whack of oak and the palpable richness to handle it can be critical to two efforts that wine geeks face regularly.

First, they make for excellent conversion wines — wines that’ll get your “beer only” friends to consider alternatives to their adult beverage of choice. Second, what they generally lack in terms of complexity and food-friendliness, they more than make up in their role as crowd-pleasers — or wines that you can serve at a party that are sure to maximize the enjoyment of as wide a subset of your friends and family as possible. Think of them as grenades of happiness. Toss a big bottle of Aussie Shiraz or California Zin into a crowd of people and you’re more than likely to make the vast majority of your crew happy. And, with just a teeny bit of effort (like, say, reading the rest of this column), you don’t have to completely sacrifice depth and balance when you’re serving these goliaths.

When it comes to turning heads in a diverse crowd, few whites can compete with the whiplash potential in a good bottle of Chardonnay. It’s a bit of a cliche to bash California chards for their oak, butter and richness, especially because there are just so many examples that aren’t oaky, buttery and rich. But for our purposes, that’s exactly what we want.

Buying a wine like this can be a little tricky. It’s easy to find one that drinks like a butter-coated cedar chip. Doesn’t sound too pleasant, does it? We need a wine with just a bit of restraint. I tend toward bottlings from the Central Coast instead of northern appellations like Napa where ripeness is amplified and winemakers tend to try to mask it with oodles of new wood.

I’ve been drinking way too much of Santa Barbara Winery’s juicy 2007 Chardonnay. This wine retails for about $15/bottle and delivers big time quality for the money. It has terrific richness and shows off bits of vanilla, caramel, pear and pink grapefruit. This is a key conversion wine for me. When somebody tells me that either A) “I don’t like Chardonnay,” or B) “I don’t drink white wine,” I try to force a bottle Central Coast Chardonnay on them…

Click Here for the full article at Burlington Free Press

Joanie Hudson, Director of National and International Marketing, Santa Barbara Winery / Lafond Winery & Vineyards

Close to 85 tons of Chardonnay

Published on October 8, 2009 in Chardonnay and Harvest. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Today was a big Harvest day for Chardonnay.  Winemaker Bruce just told me that we got in about 85 tons (ONE ton is about 2000 pounds!) of the varietal, which makes up the largest portion of our total production.  Chardonnay came in from our newer block of Wente clone at Lafond Vineyard, Thompson Vineyard, and Los Alamos. 

Tomorrow Joughin Vineyard Primitivo (genetically identical to Zinfandel) is coming in.  Also, Thompson Vineyard Petite Sirah will come off the vines and into Lafond Winery. 

Fork lifts are still beeping, and I’m making some export stickers for bottles going to Germany (2006 Lagrein and 2008 Orange Muscat).

If you like the music on our website, come see Chris Fossek live at Lafond Winery’s Open House this Saturday October 10, 10am-5pm.  And even if you don’t, you should still come…

Joanie Hudson, Director National and International Marketing, Santa Barbara Winery / Lafond Winery & Vineyards

New Release Lafond Winery

Published on April 10, 2009 in Chardonnay, New Releases and SRH Wines. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Lafond Winery 2007 SRH Chardonnay

Located in the western Santa Ynez Valley, the Santa Rita Hills AVA is an ideal environment for growing intensely flavored full-bodied Chardonnay. This AVA is distinguished by a very cool and long growing season created by a convergence of unusual geography in this part of California.

During the summer, heat rising from the Mojave Desert 90 miles inland and the eastern boundary of our unique east-west system of mountains and valleys draws in cold air from the Pacific Ocean 15 miles to our West. This guarantees cool days and chilly nights during the long growing season of the nine-mile length of the Santa Rita Hills AVA.

A blend of three neighboring vineyards, the 2007 Chardonnay SRH is winemaker Bruce McGuire’s selection to showcase the ripe, concentrated Chardonnay for which the Santa Rita Hills is known.

2007 was one of those years that Winemaker Bruce McGuire had an embarassment of riches as a smaller than normal crop yielded excellent fruit quality (small clusters and berries) through most of the Chardonnay blocks from our Lafond Vineyard, our neighbor Hill Top Ranch, and the old Sanford and Benedict Vineyard just down Santa Rosa Road.

This wine is a good choice to pair with many cows’ milk cheeses such as Brie or Camembert, and as a nice surprise, the fantastic washed-rind triple-creme Cow Girl Creamery Red Hawk. Richer foods such as roast chicken or whole farm raised striped bass are also ideal pairings. This bottling will reward aging through 2013 and promises to be quite showy through 2016.

Suggested retail: 22.00/750ml
To order:

California Chardonnay Growing Up

Published on March 8, 2009 in Chardonnay and Joanie Hudson. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

California Chardonnay has gotten a bad wrap in a lot of circles over the past decade or so.  Big, oaky butter bombs commercially marketed had a large following in their hay day, but today we see a different ball game.  Winemakers in Santa Barbara are recreating the varietal’s identity on the market, producing wines in a much lighter style with an emphasis on striking acidity. 

The amount of people that come into the tasting room and ask to skip over the Santa Barbara County Chardonnay on the list because they don’t like Chardonnay, is quite astonishing.  More astonishing though is their reaction if they are coaxed into trying it.  I seen pleasant surprises and questionable looks about the identity of this crisp, easy drinking white.  Our winemaker produces a few different styles of Chardonnay, with our largest production wine (by far) being our Santa Barbara County Chardonnay ($15).  This wine sees both oak and stainless steel fermentation and aging prior to blending the two and bottling, creating a lighter wine and allowing the fruit to shine through.

The New York Times recently posted an article titled “California Chardonnay Grow Up.”   Discussions on the “palpable sense of experimentation” that Santa Barbara winemakers are using take readers through the grape’s journey over the recent years. 

IT’S hard to feel neutral about California chardonnay. The wine’s almost effortless popularity as a mass-market white also brought it the mark of infamy. For every dozen people who unthinkingly asked for a chardonnay when they really meant any white wine, there were always a few who cried out that they’d take anything but chardonnay.

These chardonnay haters made their feelings felt. While most winemakers are loath to admit that they hold a finger up to the wind, many producers have clearly dialed back on the extremes of the California style that dominated 10 years ago.

The big buttered-popcorn fruity extravaganzas are, of course, still out there. But today far more California chardonnays are made in a much wider range of styles, from crisp, lively and lip-smacking to rich, powerful and structured, with variations of all types and sizes.

Santa Barbara County offers a sort of microcosm of California as a whole. With around 7,200 acres of chardonnay planted in 2007, according to the Agriculture Department, Santa Barbara is not nearly the region with the most chardonnay. Sonoma, Monterey and San Joaquin in the Central Valley each have around twice as many acres of chardonnay as does Santa Barbara.

But it’s hard to imagine any region outdoing Santa Barbara for the sheer variety of chardonnay styles it offers…

Click Here for the rest of the article.

Joanie Hudson, Assistant Tasting Room Manager, Santa Barbara Winery