Trouble from California

“Americans tend to have an Coca Cola palette”.
​A wine merchant said this to us in Los Angeles, a few years back. Quite funny and true. And this quote almost got us into trouble one night having dinner in San Francisco. But I’ll get back to this later.

In the United States they like it sweet and big. And when looking through a wine glass, this doesn’t paint the prettiest of pictures. White wines, for example, are often marinated in oak flavours and high sugar levels leave high alcohol percentage and complete lack of freshness. But it CAN be good; it can be amazing, in fact. We’ve tasted it, so we know. We’re heading back to California soon and thought we’d do some pre study work.

​Americans are known for their extreme use of sugar, in all areas. It’s been like this for decades and it’s not about to change any time soon. The US market is so important that all the major Champagne Houses in France have established wineries in California just to produce sweet bubbles adapted to the US palette. They like it sweet! They like it burnt and powerful. Take their biggest coffee chain, Starbucks, for instance. They roast the beans so hard that they turn completely black. This leaves a coffee with no fruit flavors and a vulgar mouth feeling. The philosophy destroys the potential, unfortunately. This applies to many areas of the culinary world of USA. And that’s to bad, because the possibilities are tremendous. 

​In a corner shop, downtown San Francisco, we stumbled across a nice selection of California wines.  We had been searching for a sign that proper wines were made here, and that we just had missed it. The two-week search had come up empty handed, until now. We explained our mission to the merchant who smiled and replied, “So do you want the classic California style or something different?” We wanted different. He presented us with a $30 bottle from a small farm in Napa. A Chardonnay. To this day, it’s one of the top whites we’ve ever tasted. The production of this small winery was 60.000 bottles a year. That’s next to nothing, and certainly is there no need for export. Everything stays local. And that sucks!

​But we found it! It was there, the gems of the Golden Coast.
As we sat down for dinner, at a restaurant the last night, we talked and laughed about the Coca Cola palette. Now, a distinguished couple sat right next to us browsing the menu. All they heard was Norwegian words “bla bla bla “and “Americans tend to have a Coca Cola palette”. One of the guys was so offended that he got all red and was ready to engage…not in a good way. His partner talked him out of it. Good for us. He probably liked the same wine as we did. We should have been more precise, I see that now.

​Here, home in Norway, the Wine Monopoly run focus areas every other month. We’ve been waiting for a proper look at USA, and we’re still waiting. But we collected five that were available and started tasting. Would there be anything reminding us of that epic bottle? With prices in the upper area, we were hopeful.

Tasting notes

Red Car Sonoma Coast Chardonnay 2014
Price: 299 NOK

Light yellow and crystal clear on color. Mild smells of toffee. Hints of carnation, nectarine and ripe citrus fruits.
Soft entry with plenty of fruits kicking about. Rich flavors of orange fruits, toast and butter. Nicely integrated acidity, that does one hell of a cleaning job in the mouth. Long and butter smooth finish that lingers for a long time.
Red Car is like a passionate lady dancing Flamenco. Powerful and fierce, but yet tight and elegant. We like Red Car!
 
Aftermath: after about an hour of air, trouble kicks in. The butter and toast flavors overtake all the nice fruits and a powerful oak-thing surfaces.

Anthill Peugh Vineyard Russian River Valley Chardonnay 2014
Price: 429 NOK

Golden sunset color. Delicious cold yellow fruits and grandma’s plum jam on smell. Hints of chalk and lemons. A wild cat on entering the mouth. This is a wine that wants a lot. Immediate presence of nice acidity and flavors of lemon, honey, melons and currants.
Shades of fresh butter. We say like the Master Chefs: “anything good has butter in it” :)

Clean delicate mouth feel, with a long finish with yellow plums and some baked goods. Excellent wine that impresses. Expensive.

County Line North Coast Chardonnay 2014
Price: 299 NOK

Light apricot yellow. Smells of beeswax, ripe lemons, pickled apricots and hints of camphor. Classic taste of beehive. Sweet and sour tones of fresh honey and flowers. A delicious layer of citrus and apricots rests on the tongue. Honey also in the after taste. Don’t get me wrong, this is far from a sweet wine but the beehive thing it has going draws fantastic parallels. A fun wine to drink!
 
Aftermath: after an hour the wine is overtaken by oak. The fun part of the wine is gone and left is trouble.

Evening Land Seven Springs Chardonnay 2013
Price: 489 NOK

Light yellow, with hints of green. Immediate smell of lemons, but that’s it. It feels a little closed on the nose. Massive in the mouth with flavors of apricot, butter, toast and almond. But the wine doesn’t know what to do. It feels messy and complicated. Short aftertaste and a strange drinking experience. We decide to leave it for an hour.
 
Aftermath: it develops some against more ripe fruits, but still this wine feels somewhat unfinished. We don’t believe that storing it would improve it appreciable. All in all at this price level one should expect a more epic drinking experience. 

Sandhi Sandford & Benedict Chardonnay 2013
​Price: 550 NOK

Crystal yellow on color. A bomb of flavors hits the nose, with a massive presence of oak. It reminds more of being in a oak barrel factory, than anything else. Oak on taste as well. And only that. What ever fruits may have been present in the grapes, are now completely camouflaged by the oak. This is American white wine in a nutshell. The price is a scandal. I’m sorry, but this wine is a shame.

​None of the wines came close to what we had in San Francisco some years ago. In two weeks we head back. Exiting.