Saturday Night - Great Expectations, Part 2

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For the main course basil and pine nut salmon with mashed potatoes and caramelized onions was paired with a 2004 Paul Hobbs “Richard Dinner Vineyard” Sonoma County Chardonnay.

"Salmon prepped and ready to be cooked"

The Paul Hobbs Chardonnay is by far and away the most I have paid for a Chardonnay as it was $100 US a bottle (about $165 Cdn. after duty, taxes and exchange). My wife, Kathy picked this one out. Kathy for a year had a subscription to Robert Parker’s newsletter. Her biggest compliant about the newsletter was for a large number of the wines reviewed that got high ratings were very small releases that were never available in the LCBO. Paul Hobbs winery was one that consistently got amazing reviews but isn’t available in the LCBO so when she saw a Paul Hobbs Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon at the Premier Group in NY she snapped both up.

"The finished product!"

I was really looking forward to trying this wine out. It’s colour was a amber gold colour that was a touch darker than normal for Chardonnays and it was slightly cloudier than I would have expected too. I was worried that there was an issue with the wine but the nose was great with vanilla, smoke, butter, pear and lychee. Tasting the wine, the my first thought was “Holy giant oak, Batman!”; this wine was an oak monster. There was a lot of complexity to this wine but I was find the huge oak kept distracting me from it. There was a nice spicy nutmeg flavour running throughout the taste of the wine with vanilla notes with a hint of pear as well.

"Not what I was expecting"

The Paul Hobbs Chardonnay wasn’t a bad pairing with the salmon but not as good as I’d hoped it would be.

Here is what the Wine Spectator had to say about this wine –

Paul Hobbs Chardonnay Sonoma Mountain Cuvée Agustina Richard Dinner Vineyard 2004

Offers subtle, delicate flavors that are built around complex notes of creamy pear, apple, fig and vanilla, which fan out nicely on the palate. Exquisite balance and depth, with a finely honed finish that holds the flavors on the palate, ending with a smoky marshmallow note. Drink now through 2009. 216 cases made. –JL, Score – 94, Price - $100.

Here is the group rating for the wine -Mick – 89, Mark – 88, Kathy – 90, Amy – 86, Overall – 88.25.

I was shocked to see how far off our group rating was from the Wine Spectator’s on this one and the Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc. For the Chardonnay, I think there were three reasons for this. The first is maybe this wine was a little past its prime as the recommendation was drink now through 2009 so we are at the end of the recommended time period. The second was we have been leaning more to French based wines in the last six months or so and have gotten used to the subtle oak. The last reason and probably the biggest factor was expectations on both wines were high and probably too high, so when they didn’t match those expectation we were a little harsh with them.

Cheers!

Mark