I've been drinking my Liquid Farm Chardonnays too young

Last night, I opened a 2012 Liquid Farm Chardonnay Four. I’ve always been a fan of the White Hill, with it’s more austere build, crisp citrus and mineral spine. The others LF wines were all well made, just bigger than I usually prefer; more extract, oak, everything. However, this bottle was a revelation with five years under its belt. Still a big wine, but it’s integrated it’s oak and sharpened rather than smoothed its edges. I loved it, as did all at the dinner table. One friend who rarely drinks white wine texted me today about this bottle, despite the fact I had opened some other phenomenal wines. If I had more, I’d lay them down for a few more years, but expect them to evolve for a decade+.

Like the Ceritas Chardonnays, the Liquid Farm wines are great on release, but need a lot of time to really show what they can do.

Cheers,

Warren

I’m a big fan of their wines, and am looking forward to trying more. They are different than most in that they decide on vinification and oak treatment separately by each wine in each vintage. It’s not like “full malo and 100% new French oak every time” but a more nuanced treatment, allowing some vintage/vineyard bottlings to be completely different the next year, and different from vineyard to vineyard in any given year. I.e. if they think the wine is big enough to handle new oak they will use it, else be more restrained. And so the style differs somewhat from vineyard to vineyard and year to year. But I think this has led to a lot of success.

I think in time a vertical of these bottlings will be most instructive. I can’t wait to see 10 vintages of White Hill or Golden Slope, not to mention the Four. Love me some Liquid Farm…

I had a 2014 Golden Slope chard last night that made my toes tingle. Damn good stuff.