Wine of the Week!

Clos Pegase2005 Mitsuko's Vineyard Chardonnay   $24            

If you’re looking for a terrific California Chardonnay then grab a bottle of our wine of the week. This time it’s Clos Pegase 2005 Mitsuko’s Vineyard Chardonnay from the Carneros area of Napa.

This is luscious one hundred percent chardonnay made with tender loving care. The grapes are picked in the cool of the Carneros night at their estate owned Mitsuko’s vineyard then whole pressed to maximize the flavor extraction and Pegase lets the natural yeasts begin the fermentation.

The use of French oak barrels adds to the elegant feel of this wine. About ten months later its bottle unfiltered, adding to the depth of the ripe peach flavor and the wine’s somewhat “fat” feel in your mouth. And here’s the kicker: you’ll find it sealed with a screwtop. At Clos Pegase they believe in this quality seal to keep the wine as fresh and untainted as possible.

Rediscover California Chardonnay with the Clos Pegase 2005 Mitsuko’s Vineyard Chardonnay for about twenty four dollars. Our Wine of the Week.

Pop the Cork™.

Wine on the Radio - March 9, 2007

Winemaker's Notes and Comments:

The result of this blend, while 100% Chardonnay, is a wine of great intensity, yet elegance and balance. On the nose, nectarine, peach and lemon-lime notes are deftly balanced with complex yet integrated chary and toasted French oak. The palate is luscious, vibrant and elegant with great opulence and a rich, long finish

To preserve the quality of the wine, this vintage we have moved to Stelvin Screw Top Closures. We hope you find the ease of opening a side benefit to the fact that this wine will never be corked!

With "feet of clay" our meticulously tended vines issue forth, each year, from restrained yields, this perfumed and intensely concentrated Chardonnay. The vines shiver through foggy mornings waiting for the afternoon sun to warm them sufficiently to ripen their bounty. When autumn arrives, each bunch is hand-picked at night to preserve its freshness and delivered cool and healthy to the winery. Here we eschew destemming and crushing in favor of whole cluster pressing, a laborious but extremely gentle process of separating the juice from its skins, avoiding the bitter tannins that might otherwise be extracted. The freshly squeezed juice is then drained to French oak barrels where it will remain until assemblage and bottling some 10 months later.

No yeasts are added to the new juice as we prefer the complexity and individuality provided by the indigenous or "wild" yeasts that convert the sugar to alcohol. The secondary fermentation, converting the hard malic acid to the softer lactic, is completed by a cultured bacteria imported from Burgundy. Although native malo-lactic fermentation is an option, we find it lends too much bitterness to the wine, and we prefer our Chardonnay to retain its unique purity of fruit, and long, cleansing finish.

To broaden the palate and mouth-feel of the wine we employ battonage, a technique that involves stirring the yeast lees in each barrel on a regular basis. By keeping the lees in suspension the wine's pure fruit character is guarded against oxidation and the wine seems to put on some weight, or "fatness," as well as being less astringent and sharp. But finally, it is the vineyard's inherent aromatic and taste persona, such as nectarine, white peach and acacia blossom that infuses the wine with its distinctive flavors. To fully capture these traits we decant the wine off its lees and, after a gentle clay fining, we bottle the wine unfiltered.

These simple, traditional and time-honored techniques are our way of delivering the purest expression of Mitsuko's Vineyard Chardonnay, capturing in bottle the dramatic nuances intrinsic to each vintage.

Notes on our Wines of the Week, Recommendations, and Picks:

When you read our thoughts, please remember that you may think differently.  A particular wine may be your favorite and not on our list.  Well, don't stop buying it because of that.  In fact, you may want to email us and let us know about it. These are our opinions but our FIRST recommendation is to go by your own palate.

A couple of other thoughts . . . first, prices are approximate.  They'll vary.  Second, different vintages mean different grapes and different tastes so our recommendation for a 2000 Merlot may not hold for 2001.

And lastly, we remind you to drink responsibly!  Now, all that said, here is a summary of  links to our suggestions.  Find one (or more) and pop the cork!

Read the fine print . . .

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