Not sure why this wine doesn’t get much attention around here. Excellent AFWE California Chardonnay that doesn’t taste like it’s from California. Reminds me most of Vincent Wine Companies excellent Chardonnays. Ian Brand did a fantastic job. NOTE: Switched from screwcap to natural cork in 2017.
2017 Le P’tit Paysan Chardonnay Jack’s Hill Vineyard- USA, California, Central Coast, Monterey County (3/14/2019)
Pale gold and crystal clear in the glass. Lemon rind, pear, grapefruit, and minerality dominate the nose on this wine. Lemon up front on the palate and then that chalky minerality I most associate with fine Muscadette. Excellent acidity. Subtle richness and malo on the wine add complexity but no discernable oak to my palate. Would guess this is made completely in neutral oak or combo oak and stainless. There is a lightness on the palate to this wine. The richness, lemon and bracing acid bounce around on the finish and linger on and on! Serious QPR for $22 MSRP. Very Chablis-like. I can’t think of another California Chardonnay for $20 that I like more. This to me ranks up there with my favorite top QPR Willamette Valley Chardonnays (Goodfellow, Cameron, and Vincents Cuvee bottlings). I doubt most tasting this wine blind would think California first. Great effort! 12.5% ABV (92 pts.)
The Cabernet is kind of ridiculous for $20. I don’t drink a lot of Cab in that price range(never actually) because I always assume it’s going to nothing like Cab I like to drink. The PP version is pretty damn solid. Nothing like the bug juice I would expect for a typical Cab at that price.
Sean – thanks for the note. We’re really happy with our last three vintages of the P’tit Paysan Chardonnay. We’re of the (mildly myopic) opinion that especially in the sub $35 price range, Monterey Chard should be the go to for American wine. Why it isn’t could fill a book, but it has little to do with the raw material. This chard is my attempt to show what the terroir can do.
Larry – the switch to cork is two-fold. 1) we thought we were making a btg chardonnay, and the screw cap was a nod to efficiency. We found it was a real detriment in wine shops and on the shelf and that using screw caps were hurting sales. While we like the consistency of the screw-cap closure, our cork supplier is great at working with us to select lots and we’ve been as good as can be hoped with natural cork. So far we’ve found no panacea in closures. 2) with the style of wines we make, while we come at it humbly, they age surprisingly well under natural cork – the 2011 lpp chard is fantastic right now – and just not so well under stelvin. If you make a more fruit forward, less acid and minerality driven style, I could imagine that being different, so it’s worth it to us to have the 2% TCA loss to have wines develop like that. We still use stelvin on things like rose that we don’t expect to develop and are looking at DIAM but haven’t done enough research yet.