This is an outstanding Chenin Blanc. This is an outstanding white.
My wife and I drained a bottle over some pan seared crab cakes. A pairing so fine.
A modestly floral honeysuckle nose with white and yellow fruits. With some air it took on flinty, smoky notes. Excellent palate weight for a lithe white, shows some waxiness as it warms. I recommend you serve this between chill and cool, not chill like other higher alcohol Cali whites. This baby is barely over 12%. And has perfectly ripe citrus and tropical fruits at that ABV, with a tangy snap. Closes with a bitter seed pith note that adds another point of intrigue.
Ha! I just posted on Insta and went here to search for Beau Rivage to say the exact same thing. Killer wine and a tremendous value. One or the better chenins ive had in a while. Huge props to William Kelley and team, and big thanks to Buzz for turning me onto this wine. Do yourselves a favor and buy some now - can see myself going through a bunch of these summer (and multiple summers after that)
Ha! I was thinking the same about your note - much more descriptive and well written compared to my half-assed take. And totally agree - I’ll be buying more for sure.
Nice! Can almost guarantee you won’t be sorry. And its supporting a fellow Berserker - Win/Win!
Side note Robert - I was just going to add how much I was digging the bitter almond type note on the finish but I see you already had that covered #WellPlayed
That was the thread I was going to search for, but it was too perfect that Robert had just posted! There’s no chance I can top a Buzz note, so prob just easier to go with ‘what he said’
2018 will be released soon! The harvest was quite different, in that in late August sugar accumulation just sort of stopped, with the grapes hanging on the vines and not much happening. We ended up picking around September 10th, about two weeks later than in 2017; yet the abv is even lower than '17. '17 we labelled at 12.1 but it’s actually 11.9, which just felt like too much of a statement for a first release. 2018 came in at 11.4, and it’s a bit finer-boned; but it’s also a bit more floral and aromatic. I was a bit anxious that we might have picked a bit too early, but it’s opening up faster than the 2017 and some of our importers have quite a strong preference for 2018. I’m personally waiting to see and think they are different but more or less evenly matched. Winemaking was pretty much the same, but we bottled the 2018 under DIAM. It will be interesting to see how that impacts the aromatic profile: not in terms of reduction, as I think we good that right, but rather because the (painfully expensive) Amorim ndtech corks we used in 2017 seemed to impart quite a bit of lactones to the wine (we sometimes forget that cork, too, is a kind of oak). Our Norwegian importer was actually saying that some of her clients found the wine a bit oaky, and since all the wood we use is used several times (and some are demi muids), I am wondering if what they are picking up are cork extractives (of course, consumers in export markets may also be more predisposed to identify oak aromas in California wines than in wines from other regions).
Thanks, as ever, for your support! Reading nice comments about the wine is really one of the most gratifying things about making it, so I can’t tell you how much it’s appreciated.
I was chatting with my wife yesterday - and trust me, my prattle about wine does not interest her much, she just drinks it - regarding whether I recall a wine critic making a wine before. I think it’s cool, but also quite gutsy, as it turns the table on the critic. By the way, I do not like the term wine “critic”. I should say wine writer. I imagine you must have had some trepidation going down this path, but glad you did. And cool that you choose a geeky grape for California, in an off-the-beaten wine region, and most of all, a release price that screams “drink me” not “collect me”. As a drinker, not a collector, the price point is highly relevant to me (as I am sure it is to many).
I wondered what the cork was, not sure I have seen it before. Any reason you did not go screw cap? I love the ritual of pulling a cork, but for whites, seems like a nice alternative. Not sure if it hurts the marketing side of the business. Was interesting to me to pop - I mean, twist off a cap - of a 2008 Biggio Hamina pinot that was excellent. A big brooding pinot that appears to have matured very well for 12 years under a cap.
In fact, production interested me before writing: I worked harvest in California and Burgundy, and fermented this 2017, before I was offered the TWA job, while I was doing non-salaried work for Decanter. And the fact that it turns the tables is one of the most interesting aspects of making my own wine. It provides a reality check, if you will. I certainly understand much better the predicament of the producer who has a critic coming to visit, opens his or her just-bottled wine, and finds that it’s horribly shut down. And it has made me a better taster, too. I wrote a bit about making wine in CA and Burgundy, and what it had contributed to my day job, here—scroll down: Robert Parker: The Wine Advocate
The price was an important part of the concept, in fact. We wanted to make an affordable everyday table wine—but using really good, organically farmed fruit, and artisanal winemaking practices. I wish it could be cheaper, but production costs rather than the price of the grapes is what drives it closer to 30 than 25.
Be sure to appreciate the next one! They are 1.20 USD each and ate away a lot of the profit margin. My dear friend and business partner Frank hates the sight of them
The simple answer re. screw caps is that I have no practical experience using them.
But from a commercial perspective, I think it probably makes the wine that bit harder to sell, too. Especially in e.g. 3* Michelin restaurants (we have two placements!) for example.
Jean-Marie Guffens’ line about screw caps is that winemakers don’t like them because, if there’s a problem with a wine under screw cap, they have to admit that they screwed it. That said, he used DIAM for his domaine wines.
That’s what I figured, William. Buecker will eat my lunch here, but I prefer cork. I prefer cork even over cork-products, I just like the antiquated ritual of opening a bottle of wine with a cork in it. I even have antique corkscrews that are gorgeous little pieces of mechanical art. And am willing to accept the risk of cork failure. That said, I get why smart producers are moving away from cork. Screw cap, for me, is a buzz kill for a special bottle. For a quaffable wine that I open in my own house, it’s fine.
Wow, $1.20 PER CORK!?! I have no idea what a typical cork costs but that sounds pricey! That’s actually a really interesting question - what is the price difference between ‘normal’/natural cork, products like Diam/Nomacork, and screw caps? We’ve had plenty of discussion around the effectiveness of each type of closure, but I can’t recall talking about the economics.
Economics is definitely an important part of it for modestly priced wines, and it would be interesting to look at the numbers (I could try to dig some up if you’d like). My notion is that, if I use natural cork, I’d like it to be the best possible—and that is unavoidably expensive. If that’s tricky economically, rather than using less good natural cork, a serious technical closure of some sort is much preferable. Cheap cork is clearly not an interesting option.
Great notes by Alfert, Buzz, and Rich. Purchased two bottles of the '17 a few months ago and was very impressed. Went back to the well for more, but all sold out by then. Glad to see more people recognizing what’s good!
William, thanks for all your comments about the cork and the '18 selection. Awesome insights.
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