NV Domaine Chandon étoile Brut

Supple Sparkler Celebrates Site Centennial

It’s my 100th wine review on Notes From The Cellar.1

I think it only fitting, then, that my 100th review is that of a celebratory wine. A real aperitif-style sparkling wine from the Napa outpost of one of Champagne’s greatest chateaux, Moët et Chandon.

The Domaine Chandon étoile Brut is DC’s prestige cuvée,2 and while it’s certainly no Dom Perignon, it’s a tasty little sucker. Aged for at least five years sur lees, it’s a wine they take very good care of.

In the glass, the wine is an extremely light yellow. Really, it’s off-white. The bubbles are tiny, and though there aren’t a ton of them, they move swiftly and put on a helluva show. On the nose, the wine shows off some pretty awesome notes of shortbread, lemon, apple, and vanilla.

The étoile is light bodied and crisp, with notes of honey and candied lemon zest joining a yeasty creaminess, and the apple and vanilla notes from the nose.

There’s a lot going on here, but don’t be scared off. The Domaine Chandon étoile is a wonderful way to toast a celebration—even one much, much more significant than a wine blog’s 100th wine review.

Verdict: A-

NV Domaine Chandon étoile Brut

NV Domaine Chandon étoile Brut

Footnotes

  1. To be fair, this isn’t the hundredth wine I’ve reviewed. The Wine Cube got two different treatments, and I’ve done one vertical review of four wines, those of Dunn Howell Mountain, but this is the 100th post I’ve made that has been marked “review.” ↩
  2. I find it hard to believe they even use this term, when—and someone feel free to correct me if I’m wrong—I believe the prestige cuvées from Champagne are always vintage wines ↩

2007 Murphy-Goode Sonoma County Chardonnay

Murphy Is Goode

Is that the laziest pun ever, up there in the headline? I mean, It’s not Ron Washam lazy, but as far as puns go…

At any rate, Chardonnay Week continues, and with this Sonoma County offering, you get a little bit of both worlds of California chardonnay. It’s not quite all butter and toothpicks, and it’s not actually unoaked.

It’s a happy medium between the two. I could drink this with food (in fact, I did), I could cook with it (in fact, I did), and I could drink it on its own (did that too). This is right in my wheelhouse as far as good, solid, everyday-style chardonnays go. I might personally still prefer sauvignon blanc, riesling, and viognier… but sometimes chardonnay comes calling.

The Murphy-Goode is an excellent answer.

It’s a light straw yellow in the glass, but there is a hint of green here too. It’s not always easy to see (and no, I wasn’t holding the glass up to a green wall or anything) but it’s there. The nose features aromas of oak, grass, lemon zest, and rain.

Yeah, I said rain, wanna fight about it?

The wine is medium-bodied, with a light oakiness, but the wine in general is clean, crisp, and light. There’s a little of that chardonnay “butteriness” here too, but so’s some minerality, a nice wet stone minerality that cuts the butter (haw!) and keeps everything a little more light hearted.

A solid, solid addition to any chard fan’s cellar. Murphy is, after all, Goode.

Verdict: B+

2007 Murphy-Goode Sonoma County Chardonnay

2007 Murphy-Goode Sonoma County Chardonnay

This Wine + More Time = Amazing Meritage

2006 Ferrari-Carano Tresor

The barrel room at Ferrari-Carano

Back to beautiful Ferrari-Carano.

As I mentioned in my review of their Eldorado Gold dessert wine, Ferrari-Carano is a pretty spectacular place. Visually stunning, physically impressive, it even smells good there.

One of the wines that Philippe sent my way, and for which I was grateful (not all of them were all that good, to be quite Francis about it) was this one: Their Tresor, a Meritage blend.

I never know whether to call these Meritages, Clarets, or “Bordeaux-style” blends. I know better than to actually call them Bordeaux, the sin of geographical fraudulence weighs heavy. The English call them Clarets, Californians tend to say Meritages. So I guess I should go with the latter.

If you didn’t pull it all out of there, what this all boils down to (my friend) is that the 2006 Ferrari-Carano Tresor is made up of cabernet sauvignon (79%), malbec (9%), merlot (5%), petit verdot (5%), and cabernet franc (2%).

The wine’s color is very dark, almost, though not quite, nebbiolo dark, with an almost-black core that lightens to ruby red edges. The Tresor’s nose is quite interesting: wet stone and earth mingle with anise and blackcurrant and just a hint of stinky barnyard, kind of a horse blanket aroma. Subtle, though.

The wine is full-bodied and tannic, with a big big structure. The alcohol needs time to soften the tannins, I think, and right now isn’t really the time to be drinking this wine. The notes here are fairly lacking in fruit, with most of the bouquet featuring pepper and more earthy aromas.

It’s gonna be a good one in a few years, I think… but 2010 might be just a bit early to be drinking the 2006 Tresor. It was released just last September, and needs some bottle time. The Tresor can be found in the $40-$50 range and will be well worth it in two or three years, but right now, it’s just a bit immature.

Verdict: B+ (with the hope I taste it again in 2013 or so)

(photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/elcapitan/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)