Grgich Hills Cellar

Most every review of a Mike Grgich Chardonnay begins with “the Paris tasting, blah, blah, blah.” It’s been a long, long time since that signal event in American history, so we won’t bore you with it (although I’m sure I’ve already done so by just mentioning it). If you’re really interested, do a search on this site of “Paris tasting,” where I’m sure you’ll find a ton of stuff (including Dan Berger’s commentary on Paris ’76 Redux).

Anyway, this Chardonnay, which is farmed organically and is moving toward biodynamic practices, is a typical Grgich wine, in that it’s beautifully balanced with some viscosity and bright, tropical fruit. There are hints of freshly mown hay in the nose and eucalyptus and sweet kiwi. The wine is young though, so I urge you to hold onto it for a year or two and drink it over the following eight years.

The fruit comes from Ggrich’s American Canyon and Carneros vineyards, marking the first time in the amazing career of Mike Grgich, that he completely controlled all of his Chardonnay grapes -- an amazing fact. Further, the wine did not undergo malolactic fermentation (ML), which to my mind masks and sweetens the true nature of the variety.

The listed alcohol is 14.3 percent, the yeasts are indigenous, and the wine spent eight months in French oak, only one-third of which was new. There were a whopping 24, 500 cases produced.

Reviewed December 21, 2006 by Alan Goldfarb.