Kendall Jackson Avant Chardonnay 2009

I was kind of surprised to see that I haven’t made a post since before Christmas. Of course the holiday takes a bit of a toll on my available time. But what has been eating up all my free bandwidth is that my work at Fabbioli Cellars is starting to take me in new and exciting directions. You see,  Doug (as in Doug Fabbioli the owner of Fabbioli Cellars) is attempting to put together a school of sorts focusing on helping people start small businesses of an agricultural nature and I’m being tasked to develop some of the course material for this school.

So I’m sitting here this morning trying to figure out what to write about when I remembered that on Christmas Eve, Ms Cocktail and I had a bit of a gathering at the house. Nothing incredibly formal, just  a place for people to hang out if they didn’t want to be alone on Christmas Eve. One of the people who showed up, I’ll call him the Bartender King, was kind enough to bring a couple of bottles of wine, a Cabernet Sauvignon and a Chardonnay.

The Cabernet Sauvignon was drank that evening but I found the Chardonnay in the fridge a couple of days later. It was a Kendall Jackson and for the most part, I’m not a fan of their wines. However, I was pleasantly surprised by this one. It seems that someone over there got the message that Chardonnay drinkers don’t want to be chewing on oak chips with their wine. So while this one does see some time in oak barrels, it is just enough to give some character to the wine, in fact many people would miss the oak entirely. It is pretty light and crisp and that made me smile just a little bit. Fro that reason, I give this wine 3 out of 5 glasses.

Tasting Notes

This is a clear, medium intense, lemon colored wine with legs. It has a clean, youthful, medium (-) intense nose with aromas of pear and honeysuckle. It is a dry wine with medium (+) acidity, medium alcohol, medium (-) tannins and medium body. It has medium intense flavors of green apple, pear and grapefruit with a medium length finish. It is a good, mid-priced wine that is ready to drink now but will not improve in the bottle.