So this……was a WILD ride!! I’ve really been looking forward to opening this bottle for a while now, and a hot 4th of July weekend here in AZ felt like the right time. As we all know, opening older bottles is a crapshoot, but this looked to be in great shape and the wine was incredibly clear through the glass, which made me hopeful that it could reach the heights that my guy @B_Buzzini experienced a few years back. Spoiler alert……it did not disappoint.
The color, as I referenced here (Guess How Old This White Wine Is) , was insane. The pics don’t really do it justice, but it was a beautiful light straw color with a green tint to it. Very, very young looking!
In the mouth, this was an explosion of complexity that is honestly really hard to capture in words (doesn’t help that I’m awful at TN’s, ha!). Somehow it’s almost primary, and full of citrus oil, sour apples, lemon pith, chamomile, and sweet florals. It has a lovely, oily, almost viscous texture when it first hits your palate, but that’s all washed down by a long acid-filled finish that keeps morphing in your mouth.
Truly, it’s almost impossible to capture the essence of this wine, as there’s so much going on and it keeps changing by the minute. Blind, there is zero chance you’d guess that this was anywhere near a 57 year old wine. An unforgettable experience, and literally one of the most complex and interesting bottles I’ve ever had. Hands-down, my #1 white wine ever. Happy 4th of July indeed!!
Guess I’m not to surprised this was still singing, Rich. It was always a legendary Chard. If I recall the story right, this was the first Chard produced at SpringMtn Wnry & Mike Robbins didn’t think it was at the level to put their SM label on it. So he sold the entire production to Joe Heitz, who was always in the market for a bargain.
Tom
I seem to recall that even when I started buying wines in the early 1980s there were California Chardonnays labeled Pinot Chardonnay - I think I bought some once. Don’t know why. Could it once have been thought that Chardonnay was part of the Pinot family? Could there have been some Pinot Blanc mixed in with the Chardonnay? Maybe someone else knows the reason.
Anyway, great find Rich. You are really doing a great job with these old wines lately. After your post on Mayacamas LH Zinfandel, I found some 1979 Ridge Zin and bought them. If you keep posting on these wonderful old wines you are going to cost me a lot of money.
Yes, Chardonnay was thought to be part of the Pinot family. It was also a relatively unknown name, not so commonly planted in California and in an era of transition to varietal labeling. “Pinot” added a degree of cache. The Feds cracked down on lax varietal claims, so some of these went away, like Pinot St. George, a bunch of not Riesling Riesling-this&that like Grey Riesling, the various not Gamays…
That was the wine that got me my first job in the wine business. Paul Masson Vineyards was a client of the company I worked for and I was able to tag along on a visit to view Masson’s new vineyards in Monterey County. There was a group dinner that night at a wonderful old restaurant in Monterey called Gallatin’s. My boss knew I had a bit of wine knowledge, passed me the wine list and told me to pick something that would go well with Gallatin’s specialty - abalone. I selected the Heitz Z-82 and it was absolute magic, still one of the best food/wine pairings I’ve ever experienced. The entire table fell into a stunned silence and the client - Paul Masson’s VP of Marketing - became a friend and mentor and eventually offered me a job to come work for them.
Congratulations! One you will be thinking about for a long long time! If I remember right, you picked that up on WB? I didn’t bid on it, because I thought there would be no way it could come close to the pristine bottle we had prior, and I didn’t want to lessen that memory. Guess I was wrong! Unbelievable youthfulness and complexities…‘Montrachet meets Chapoutier Ermitage Blanc’ I wrote! Not a hint of ox, and all that great flavors and textures of a perfectly aged wine. SO glad you had a great bottle…but if I ever see another come up at auction…friendship aside…the gloves come off!
