Saturday Night – Mick and Amy who?

As I explained in my last post, Mick and Amy were away this weekend so we were on our own and Kathy decided that we’d have a wine weekend in spite of this.

"One of Kathy's favourites"

I did up a Chicken Caesar salad for our Saturday night dinner as this is a big favourite of Kathy’s. I picked a 2006 Sonoma-Cutrer Russian River Ranches Chardonnay to go with it.

The nose on the wine was green apple with vanilla and tropical fruit notes. Tasting the wine, lime was the main favour to you noticed. I wasn’t enamored with this wine on its own as it was a touch bitter and really didn’t have much going for it. With the Caesar salad this wine became much better; the bitterness went completely away and the lime flavour made a nice compliment to the food. On Sunday I did up a Chicken Alfredo and we had some of the wine leftover and it was also a very good pairing with this too.

"A great food wine"

With Chardonnay I have two wines that I usually use as my benchmarks; Kendall Jackson Vintner’s Reverse Chardonnay and Louis Jadot Bourgogne. The KJ is filled with tropical fruit and lots of oak where as the Jadot is subtly oaked and is done more in a crisp mineral style. The Sonoma-Cutrer sits right between these two but leans more towards the Jadot in style.

Here is our ratings for this wine – Kathy – 85, Mark – 88, Overall – 86.5

Here is the LCBO information on this wine –

SONOMA-CUTRER RUSSIAN RIVER RANCHES CHARDONNAY (V)

Vintages 608653
750 mL bottle
Price: $ 24.95
Wine, White Wine
14.2% Alcohol/Vol.
Sugar Content : XD
Made in: California/Californie, United States
By: Sonoma Cutrer Winery
Release Date: May 15, 2010

Description - Once again rated the most popular Chardonnay in Wine & Spirits' 20th Annual Restaurant Poll (April 2009), this is Sonoma-Cutrer's flagship wine. This medium-bodied Chard serves up flavours of tropical fruit, roasted hazelnut, citrus, florals, butter and hints of mineral. Terrific with grilled whole fish, or serve it with a good Camembert and homemade bread.

The thing I like about this wine is it is a very food friendly wine, if you know a food calls for a Chardonnay but are unsure what type of Chardonnay it should go with, this would be the wine I’d grab. The thing I don’t like about this wine is the price; I’d save the $5 and grab a KJ Chard or a Jadot instead.

Cheers!

Mark