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What We Say 2006 Estate Chardonnay
If you are visiting us for the first time, Welcome! The Wine Spies feature one exceptional wine each day – and we only bring you wines that we ourselves seek out and love. Always, the wines are great. Sometimes greater than great, as is the case with today’s wine from Rosenthal – The Malibu Estate.
Mission Codename: Happy New Year!
Operative: Agent White
Objective: Explore the Wines of Newton Canyon in Malibu, California
Mission Status: Accomplished!
Current Winery: Rosenthal – The Malibu Estate
Wine Subject: 2006 Estate Chardonnay
Backgrounder:
While sometimes I regret being stationed at our Top Secret Operations Center in Southern California, it is always, this time of year that I think – ‘wow – I really do have it good’, especially after the recent assignments to France and Italy I was recently dispatched to supervise. ‘It is nice to be back home.’
Our operatives are in the field, scoping out the latest wine intel, and I get to enjoy another perfect SoCal day tasting wines and finding some spectacular deals for our operatives.
Irony today, we have a wine from the SoCal area, from the small AVA of Malibu Newton Canyon. Rosenthal – The Malibu Estate is know for making elegant wines of tremendous character.
Wine Spies Tasting Profile:
Look – Golden light yellow and excellent clarity.
Smell – Sweet honey, ripe pears, orange blossoms and mild toasted oak.
Feel – Smooth and wet, not at all dry, almost reminiscent of a desert wine with a nice medium-bodied viscosity and feel. (This wine doesn’t taste like a desert wine – it only has the feel.)
Taste – Very nice solid fruit with apples, pears, and a hint of tropical fruit, citrus acidity and honey.
Finish – Smooth and slightly sweet, not overly buttery or oaky.
Conclusion – this wine doesn’t drink like your typical Chardonnay. It is rich and smooth without the huge oak and buttery flavors that dominate most California Chardonnays. It has the creaminess tat lovers of Chardonnay expect, however, this wine shows much more balance and thus has much broader appeal. This wines will accompany a wide range of foods and is very drinkable.
Wine Spies Technical Analysis:
Varietals: 100% Chardonnay, Dijon Clone
pH: 3.49
Brix at Harvest: 22.4
Residual Sugar: None
Alcohol: 14.1%
TA: .68
Cooperage: Aged sur lie — Tonnellerie Cadus barrels, Center of France
AVA: Malibu – Newton Canyon
Cases produced: 730
Mission Report:
Not much of a mission report on this wine. Just enjoying the holiday season, sitting at the beach as I report to you on this wine and getting ready for some great college football! Heaven knows, that if the BCS enjoyed a glass or two of this fine wine we might actually be watching some BCS matchups that make sense.
Postscript: wonder if I can bribe the Rosebowl officials with some of this wine for tickets to the USC-Illinois game?
Wine Spies Vineyard Check:
The location of the Rosenthal – The Malibu Estate vineyards can be seen in this satellite photo.
Shipping Note:
Due to the holidays, order palced on this wine will be shipped on January 7th and 8th. The Winery’s warehouse is closed until after the New Year. Thank you.
What the Winery Says
Rosenthal - The Malibu Estate
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About This Wine:
A very elegant, medium-bodied wine, exhibiting nuances of pear, apple, Meyer lemon, and stone fruit, with a subtle hint of creamy vanilla from French oak aging. The fresh, lingering finish is rich and complex. Not your usual California oaky, buttery style Chardonnay. Compliments a wide array of foods
About The Vintage:
Drier than normal conditions gave us less water in the soil to start the spring, and we were dependent on earlier irrigations. Having this recourse allowed us to fine tune the growth of the vines, keeping vigor to a minimum, yet allowing enough canopy growth to ripen the crop. As we do in most years, some cluster thinning was required to keep the tonnage per acre, and clusters per vine, to our target levels.
With rains through the bloom period, we had smaller and looser clusters than normal, but were able to harvest a normal crop. We picked the fruit based on our desired flavor profiles and delivered some very flavorful, bright, and floral Chardonnay.
One of the coolest ripening periods provided slow even ripening, but some nervous late fall concerns. We finished harvest before rains began in October, and had just enough hang time.
About Rosenthal – The Malibu Estate:
Fine wine from Malibu? Southern California’s Malibu, home to movie stars and Bay Watch?
Yes, these wines are from grapes grown in Malibu not on the famous beach, but in a scenic valley four miles from the coast, 1,400-feet up, above the coastal fog, in the AVA Malibu Newton Canyon.
George Rosenthal, owner of movie studios, hotels, and other enterprises, first planted vineyards at his 250 acre estate in 1987, after spending two years checking soil and weather to make sure he planted the correct varietals in the correct locations.
25 acres of hillside vines are planted in this unique microclimate, where cool breezes filter into Newton Canyon in the evening, tempering warm, sunny days. Even with this boutique size, individual plots of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc are separately vinified and barrel-aged before blending.
Winemaker Christian Roguenant strives to bring out the unique terroir of the site. The reds are unfiltered and unfined, and the Chardonnay does not go through ML. All the grapes come from the estate vineyards.
Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Chardonnay can be enjoyed in some of LA’s toniest restaurants, and some of Hollywood’s top stars have sipped the wines at the estate.
You may not be able to wrangle an invitation to the vineyard (then again, you might), but you can now enjoy these wines at your own – estate”.
