Wednesday, July 15, 2009

"Wild" wine

Today's wine recommendation comes courtesy of me watching "No Reservations" the other night. In the new episode, Anthony Bourdain visits Chile, and frankly I want to go now. Instead of hopping on a plane, I decided to open a bottle of the 2007 Errazuriz "Wild Ferment" Chardonnay. This is a wonderfully rustic bottle of chard. The green apple, pear, and pineapple notes are there, as one would expect, but it just drinks a little less refined than some of the B.S. wines from California. The oak treatment on it is more of a seasoning than a flavor. I think another reason that I like the wine is that last year I spent about a day and a half working the market with the winemaker (Soledad Meneses), who is a wonderful lady, and a lot of fun.

A quick note about "Wild Ferment"- This just means that they use the natural yeasts on the grape skins to start the fermentation process. Many wineries will innoculate the grape juice with their own, scientifically developed, strains of yeast to ferment wine, allowing them more control on the final outcome of the wine. I like the wild ferment ones, they just seem more natural to me.

Oh yeah, to those that care, this wine scored 90 points from Robert Parker's Wine Advocate, and should cost you around $15 - $17 retail.

Cheers- go drink something good!

1 comment:

  1. So far so good---but I really just wanted to claim the prize of being the first person to make a comment!

    And as far as I know, you are the only sommelier I know!

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