Many who know me make fun of me for my staunch and very much vocalized aversion to Chardonnay. But this encased and ravenously coherent translation was a reminder to be humble with the white Burgundy… Well, to start with this bottle, the varietal of Chardonnay was actually visible, no deafening oak nor was it “engineered Chardonnay”, as I always say so many are, at least the ones I taste. This little palate nymph hopped about my senses with jabs of convivial green apple, in giggly flashes I felt, and novelizing acidity, picturesquely luminous in how it scaffolded the fruit. Again, I abhor Chardonnay, but this bottle silences me with its educational construction and quaffable qualities– ugh, I hate that word, “quaff”, or “quaffable”. Such a sommelier thing to say– so then what, writer, Mr. “vinoLit”.. Mr. “MOCK SOMM”? Imbibing? Communicative?– YES! This Chardonnay does communicate with this writer and not with resentment or retribution for my years of hate-speech around its stylistic inconsistencies and meandering and rushingly postmodern indecisiveness– before this, Chardonnay was tangible and a theory. Tangible in that I had tasted it, so many times, given it so many invitations to tell my receptors and senses and soul something new, tell a new tune, sing it, and it forwardly and firingly failed; Then, theory-thrown in that a Chardonnay I WILL enjoy may be out there, somewhere. With the Loch Ness, Yeti, and La Llorona. But there I was, in John Ash, at the bar, sipping a Chardonnay. And what a ravishing conveying of both the Central Coast, a region I feel abominably underrated, and the ’13 vintage itself as a character.

“The only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing.” Socrates. And obviously I don’t when it comes to Chardonnay. The vividly effulgent ones are out there. I found one. Finally.

MM89

(6/2/15)