As part of a contest I won on Katie Pizzuto’s awesome “Gonzo Gastronomy” blog, she and I both reviewed this wine together. This is my unfiltered review, and her finished blog entry can be found below.Wine was surprisingly good for a city winery vanity effort…and Katie’s blog is unbelieveably good all the time…
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2008 City Winery Chardonnay Bored to Death - USA, California (11/24/2010)
If you are a fan of a crisp austere mineral driven chardonnay made in a Chablis like manner, my advice is for you to take this bottle, carefully wrap it in a protective towel, take it to a beautiful mountain vista with a loved one, carefully and lovingly unwrap the bottle…and toss it off of the mountain. If you have some sort of incendiary device, attaching it to the bottle for added explosion would be optional.
Fortunately for me, I do not like my Chardonnays that way. In fact I love the the tropical fruit aroma that almost punches you in the mouth after pulling the cork - especially if I am not having it with dinner. This wine was not a one sense wonder however, as the tropical fruit salad also carried over to the palate where it was joined by what can best be described as a finish of Banana cream pie. This wine is a hedonistic fun great sipping wine, that would be even better if drank while sitting by a pool, or in a indoor pool bar. Though ostensibly a dry wine, it was so fruit driven as to have a hint of sweetness to it. It was all I could do to resist sticking a brightly colored umbrella into my wine glass. All the while though, I could not put my finger on what the wine reminded me of.
I offered a glass to Mrs. Coupe who was happily sipping a glass of her Chilean Cabernet, and who is not a fan of white wines. she humored me by taking a sip, and then took another. I asked her what she thought and she said that she really liked it.She said it reminded her of a mix of a nice German Riesling with a chardonnay, but in a good way. And Bam…you know what she was right, I was now able to put my finger on the taste profile. It had a bit of a Riesling profile, but without the acidity, and with a fuller richer body. Strangely, at least for me it was a mix that really worked (though I could see some that would really hate this wine).
While not profound, it was a delicious fun wine - Something I enjoyed tremendously. Mrs. Coupe also enjoyed it. She actually put down her Cabernet, got out another glass and poured herself a nice glass of good old Cali Chardonnay…Compliments don’t come much higher than that. I’ll call this a 92-93 point effort, and one that I really enjoyed. I will seek out more bottles of this maybe from City Winery, though I know they may be tough to find for a novelty bottling like this. I do think it will be worth the effort however. (92 pts.)
Posted from CellarTracker