What a weird and pleasantly surprising wine! I’ve never heard of Chateaux Beaux Hauts nor the En Tirage line of sparkling wines. I only bought this because a 29 yr old bottle of sparkling wine for $35 (from Benchmark, which is an excellent retailer) seemed like an interesting gamble I was willing to take.
First of all, to my surprise, the wine was not terrible. I expected brown colored, slightly fizzy, vinegar. I wouldn’t expect anything else from an inexpensive nearly 30 yr old Sonoma Chardonnay. Instead I got a proper aged sparkling wine!
The color is deep gold, mousse is very coarse and vigorous at first, but settles down into a reasonably fine level of carbonation. The nose is aged, but still very much alive and quite pleasant. Bruised yellow apples are at the forefront, toasty-yeasty-bready aromas, and a bit of charred lemon. Acidity is medium to medium plus. On the palate, there are those golden apples again but now accompanied by golden raisin, lemon curd, less breadiness than on the nose. Finish is kind of short.
The half-bottle left over improved vastly overnight in the fridge. The carbonation really turned to true pinpoint bubbles. The aromas and flavors were the same, but turned up a notch and with a longer finish. Don’t hesitate to give this wine some air!
Finally, I have no idea how anybody made any profit on this wine. Russian River Valley Chardonnay grapes, vinified, aged on its lees for 17 years, with an additional 5 years of bottle age, all for $35?! No idea how the economics work out on that one. At the end of the day, a decent aged sparkler that was well worth $35. No idea when I’ll ever run across something like this again, since it’s so unusual, but if I do, I’d gladly plop down the $35 in a heartbeat.
Looks like there is a relevant SF Chronicle article, but its only accessible to paying subscribers.
Does anyone know anything about this wine? I’m curious given what an odd duck it is.
