Crystal clear, dark crimson. Faint fresh fruit aromas beneath dominant prune. Port and Madeira flavors of prune and raisin,with light red berry notes. Raisiny finish. Marvelously well balanced, delicate, not complex.
I saw this in the end bin at Chambers amongst odds and ends from a recent cellar acquisition, and I decided I had to try it in the interest of science. I’m glad I did. Some might say that the fact this has survived makes it like Shaw’s talking dog, but there’s more to it than that. While not profound, at 40 years old this is delicious, interesting, enjoyable and alive. I’m guessing that this modest mass market wine is showing better than the vast majority of the current crop of $100+ bottlings will show 40 years from now.
I raise my glass to Brother Timothy, a fine winemaker and a Napa pioneer.
Very cool find Mark, and in the end bin at Chambers St. no less. Crazy. I’m guessing this was “Napa Gamay” or Valdiguie, which would account for the dark color. Not exactly gamay noir a jus blanc but no less fun to try.
Hey Vincent, on the label it says " a superb red wine of the true beaujolais grape" so they must have been convinced they had true Gamay Noir. Though given the lack of the ability to test DNA and the rather casual planting practices back in the day, anything is possible. I recall that, as a rule, CB’s gamay was not particularly dark back then (in fact I think most of it went into rose) so it could be that this was true gamay noir that just got darker over the years. But, as you said, fun to try no matter what it was.
Back in those days (by crackey), there were two known Gamays…NapaGamay and GamayBeaujolais. They were used sort of interchangeably.
Buut, about that time, they identified NapaGamay as a feeble clone of PinotNoir. So a lot of folks started calling their NapaGamay PinotNoir instead.
And most people thought (incorrectly) that GamayBeaujolais was the real GamayNoir a jus Blanc of Beaujolais. It wasn’t until the early '80’s (if my
recollect is correct…it’s not always) that GamayBeaujolais was identified as Valdiguie. And, this was before DNA if I recall right. So this
ChristianBroos is 99.9% likely to be Valdiguie (or maybe PinotNoir).
There’s not too much GamayNoir planted in Calif or Oregon yet. SteveEdmunds is the master of that variety.
Tom