sfwinelover1
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2018 Merryvale Chardonnay Silhouette
4/18/2024 - sfwinelover1 Likes this wine: 93 Points
First of 2 ($43.99@) from the big box wine store a couple of months ago. On the nose and palate, medium vibrant notes of apples, pears and lesser amounts of orange rind and tropical fruit cocktail, sweet white florals, river rocks and lees. Very light gold/crystalline, medium to full bodied, medium to thick legs. Medium acidity, which is well integrated, no heat. VG complexity, persistence and intensity. I’m fond of this producer, particularly its Profile and have had many of its other wines with more mixed feelings, but this is my first go with this cuvee, the white analog to the Profile (get it, Silhouette, Profile?). A lot of what gets CA chards over the hump of acceptability for me is absence as much as presence: lack (or at least minimal) oakiness, vanilla, sweetness and present alcohol. Check, check, check and check. This wine presents with notable balance, with just enough richness so that you’d confidently put your chips on its CA provenance. This gives this a nice glide and delivery, making a really good sipper on its own, and I recall it being solid against a couple of seafood dishes, although writing this TN 2 weeks later, don’t remember what they were. What this wine lacked for me was enough energy and delineation, which could have taken it closer to excellence, and made it more distinctive drinking experience. Since most of my wine consumption is on my own, I rarely have more than one bottle open at a time (dust on my Coravin, alas), but this was the unusual occurrence where I had a glass left of the ‘16 Morlet CdC left from dinner the night before I popped this. That wine is my favorite chard from either side of the Pond, 4x more than I paid for this, and I wondered on opening how this could compete, and the answer was a TKO in favor of Luc, with his wine showing far superior frame, tension and depth. The showing here is solid, and at what I paid, a bit over half of retail (note that with careful shopping, this producer’s wines can be often had at deep discounts to retail/winery prices), a good but unexceptional choice. Glad for one more, but probably wouldn’t be a buyer again at this price. Should be at or around peak but will drink well for at least a few more years. 93+
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2016 Morlet Family Vineyards Chardonnay Coup de Coeur
4/17/2024 - sfwinelover1 Likes this wine:
Brought to Amima as a small thank you to MNWJ (WBW also benefited, as he should for having chauffeured the old guys through the Valley for 2 days) along with the Ovid (I’m nothing if not gracious). I’ve written at length about this but mostly weigh in here to say that 1) I think that this continues to be prime drinking window with no signs of fading in sight, and 2) while I think that this pairs immaculately with meatier fish, poultry and perhaps even something like a lean pork, it was just too robust for the mostly white Omakase (the Cristal, a Spottswoode SB or even the Eden Rift chard would have paired better), even though this wine could never be truly inappropriate with much of anything. This is still a 100 pt’er for me, joining the ‘21 Bella Oaks as the only perfect wines of the trip. Acquiring more at what I paid for these would be a complete no brainer.
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2021 Phillips Family Farming Cabernet Sauvignon Baker & Hamilton
4/16/2024 - sfwinelover1 Likes this wine: 92 Points
From a tasting at the winery. Medium vibrant notes on the palate and nose of blue-black fruit, dark soil, mixed spice. Well balanced and drinking easily in its youth, this wine, to borrow a turn of phrase of another CTer (he used it for a wine I liked considerably more) is perfectly “fine” in the sense that nothing is out of place, is good on its own and, although I drank it with charcuterie only, should work reasonably well with the usual Cab-friendly red meat dishes, but, but, but, seems to really lack affect, to be pretty indistinguishable from tens (hundreds?) of other NV cabs, most at lower, some much lower, prices. Perhaps some of my feeling was having in this in the middle of the day in the middle of a tasting (still a bit perplexed by not starting with the entry level wine) of really good wines so that I wonder if I might have had a better reaction drinking this (as well as the flagship for ‘22) under different circumstances, when it was hard to consider them without thinking about the far superior ‘21 flagship, which had been tasted earlier. 92+
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