History: Back when winemaker Michelle MacCready (of Sierra Vista Winery) was working for me, we chatted about how nice it would be if there were decent unoaked non-malo’d chardonnays available. It struck me that the market for such an item is limited, but a small producer could easily find a niche. She liked the idea, but felt that it would be too hard to sell.<\/p>\n
Fast forward: Michelle spends a summer in Oz, tastes quite a few unoaked chards, is told by many winemakers that there’s no export market for it, but that they sell like crazy to their more sophisticated customers.<\/p>\n
Fast forward again: Michelle comes back to California and decides (with her dad, John) to make a few hundred cases as an experiment. John takes a few with him on sales trips and finds that they take zero effort to sell, being such an unusual item.<\/p>\n
Final fast forward: I get a taste and immediately buy case lots.<\/p>\n
Official Tasting Note: 1999 Sierra Vista Chardonnay Unoaked (El Dorado): Steely green apple, vibrant acidity, lowish alcohol (12.5%), mineral flavors, great cut and finish. Squeaky clean. Perfect food wine, went great with Lou Perac Perail cheese. I would assume that it would make a great Chablis stand-in, but I’m not a fish eater so someone will have to confirm. $10 full-boat retail, about $8-9 street price.<\/p>\n
Official Ratings: Figure 78 points from Parker. Figure 76 points from Spectator. I give it a Larry Curly. <\/p>\n
SY (5\/00)<\/p>\n
History: Back when winemaker Michelle MacCready (of Sierra Vista Winery) was working for me, we chatted about how nice it would be if there were decent unoaked non-malo’d chardonnays available. It struck me that the market for such an item is limited, but a small producer could easily find a niche. She liked the idea, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,128],"tags":[19,55],"class_list":["post-1541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-69","category-tasting-notes","tag-california","tag-white-wine","has-post-title","no-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2blXF-oR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-stupids.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-stupids.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-stupids.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-stupids.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-stupids.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1541"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-stupids.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2339,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-stupids.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541\/revisions\/2339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-stupids.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-stupids.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-stupids.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}