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EXPEN.RG
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1993-06-18
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THE WINE TASTER
By Robin Garr
The Courier-Journal, Oct. 4, 1987
Last week's dissertation on bargain Chardonnay raises a related
question: If you can get such good white wine for $5, what pleasures await
the wine taster willing to lay out double digits for what (one hopes) might
be an unforgettable beverage?
There's a certain financial risk in any expensive luxury. Like costly
automobiles, jewelry, audiophile high-fidelity equipment and all the other
not-so-necessary things with which people who can afford it indulge
themselves, high-ticket items may reflect either high quality and the maker's
personal attention or simply an entrepreneur's well-honed sense of what the
market will bear.
This can be a problem. It's too bad when a $3 bottle of wine is
disappointing, but you haven't lost that much. A repulsive $20 bottle,
however, comes close to being a disaster.
(Minimizing this kind of risk prompts many wine lovers to pay good money
for wine books -- and to read columns such as this one.)
For the sake of pure research (of course), I recently invested
substantial sums in two relatively expensive wines, both with excellent
reputations: A 1985 Rosemount Estate Roxburgh Chardonnay from the Hunter
Valley of southeastern Australia ($20.99) and a 1985 Sonoma-Cutrer
Russian River Valley Chardonnay from Northern California ($12.99).
Both, while short of the $50 range in which a few fancy French
Burgundies reside, are in a financial neighborhood that's likely to put off
all but the committed (and flush) wine lover.
What do you get for your money?
In this case, you'll get two excellent -- and stylistically very
different -- white wines.
The Sonoma-Cutrer inspires such laudatory but vague critical terms as
"character" and "finesse." What's that mean? It's a well-balanced wine, in
which refreshing fruit, crisp, lemony acid and aromatic oak play
complementary roles with none dominating.
Sonoma-Cutrer, a Chardonnay-only winery in Windsor, Calif., that is
justifiably one of the hottest names in California wine these days, boasts
that its products are virtually hand-made.
Wine maker William Bonetti writes on the back label: "I personally have
supervised every step in the production of this wine, and I truly believe no
wine has ever received more care and dedication than this one."
That may be hyperbole, but there's some justification for it. The wine
is worth the price.
The Roxburgh, flagship wine of Australia's respected Rosemount Estate
winery, lived up to its reputation, too.
Unlike the Sonoma-Cutrer, it's a wine defined by oak aging, which
imparts a taste that some must acquire but that others -- including me --
find delicious when the wine is made with care and pride.
Fermentation and a year's aging in small oak barrels from Allier and
Vosges in France impart a bright-gold color, aroma and flavor tones of
chestnuts and tropical fruit, and a full-bodied, glass-coating quality that
gives meaning to the wine taster's term "buttery."
It's not that hard to make an oaky wine, however; given storage time,
any wine maker with access to wooden casks can do that.
Roxburgh's distinguished wine is not merely oaky. Again, the twin keys
are balance and complexity. The richness of oak is matched with ripe
Chardonnay fruit in a luxurious wine with layers of haunting flavor,
competitive with the best from California or France.
(5 stars) Rosemount Estate Hunter Valley "Roxburgh" Chardonnay, 1985. This
bright, brass-colored wine sends up a rich, heavy scent of tropical fruit
that mingles figs, a faintly musky overtone and a warming hint of roast
chestnuts. Its heavy, full-bodied but crisp flavor virtually explodes in your
mouth with layers of flavor -- fruit and oak -- that seem to last for minutes
while unraveling and revealing more and more.
(4 1/2 stars) Sonoma-Cutrer Russian River Valley Chardonnay, 1985. This
clear, greenish-gold wine's appetizing scent offers fruit and yeast and a
delicious nuance of something like hazelnuts. Rich fruit, oak and crisp,
lemony acid are balanced in its clean, lingering flavor.
Courier-Journal Wine and Food Critic Robin Garr rates table wines
available in the Louisville area, using a one- to five-star scale determined
by quality and value. Send suggestions or questions in care of The
Courier-Journal, 525 W. Broadway, Louisville, Ky. 40202, call (502) 582-4647
or send EasyMail to 73125,70.