Wine Recommendation:
WineSmith-GrapeCraft 2002 Faux Chablis
Faux Chablis:
We frequently show our winemaker clients how to make beautiful whites of delicate fragrance, racy structure and mineral depth, and they often love these wines better than the styles they market. Unhappily, we have yet to persuade a single client that the public shares a taste for these beautiful wines.
As an instructor at Napa Valley College, I have waited in line for 9 years to obtain Chardonnay from its wonderful Student Vineyard, overseen by Stephen Krebs, the director of NVC's Viticulture Program. The living soil Steve maintains in this beautifully balanced vineyard imparts in the finish a mineral electricity rarely seen in California whites.
We elected to suppress malolactic to maintain the wine's acidity and fresh flowery expression. Bâtonage sur lies and restrained use of well-seasoned Alliers oak impart rich structure, aromatic complexity and reductive strength which invite a few years' cellaring.
Our French friends find wry humor in America's only pure-Chardonnay "Chablis.”
"One California winery is even trying to out-Chablis the Chablisoisie: WineSmith makes an incredibly steely Chardonnay under the name Faux Chablis. I don't know whether Ernst & Young would approve of that name, but the wine is extraordinary"
--James Rodewald, Gourmet Magazine, April 2005
Technical Notes:
| Appellation: |
New York State
|
| Production: |
30 Cases
|
| Alcohol: |
Adjusted via recombinatory
distillation of reverse osmosis permeate to
“sweet spot” at 12.9 %
|
| Aging: |
Restrained use of well seasoned, untoasted Alliers oak |