Twisted Vine Russian River Chardonnay 4-Pack
$59.99 $̶1̶1̶5̶.̶0̶0̶ 48% off List Price
2011 Twisted Vine Chardonnay, Russian River Valley, Sonoma County
CT link above
Jon here from Inspiration/Twisted Vine - our 2011 TV Chardonnay has a tad more butter and oak than it’s parent wine I make under Inspiration.
This wine is also filtered and a great sipper. I will be on the boards more tomorrow if you have any questions - thanks to harvest and crush, I need to crash and will be hitting the hay shortly.
Please feel free to jump on and ask questions.
Cheers…
Jon
What’s this? I seem to have found a loose bottle of Twisted Vine Chardonnay that fell off the back of the FedEx truck. Quickly into the fridge it goes.
Now on to the notes:
On pnp
Color is a pale straw that has a faint greenish cast. Very clear wine with little to no legs.
Nose is green apples and a bit of floral. Very strongly apples.
Wow this is buttery! and lots of acid. Beginning is still green apples. And the acid is a bit distracting filling the middle until the end when lots of vanilla shows up.
I’m not sure about this one. I don’t know if it could use a bit more time for it all to knit together. I feel like everything is a bit extreme right now. The acid is to much for me and it’s hard for me to get much out of the wine in the mid palate because of that. So I’m left with that tart green apple beginning and then just sour followed by vanilla. The sour didn’t remind me of anything as of yet since it just sorta blew me out of the water. I’d be interested in seeing how this knits together in a few years and seeing if the acid starts to precipitate out.
Right now I’m not a buyer but I’d be interested in seeing how this does in a few years. It seems young and I’m not willing to cellar a white when I’ve got all the reds screaming for attention. If you’re looking for a white that could age this might be your ticket.
Are you shipping to New York now??
[MOD: Yes, NY is good to go again.]
Why no shipping to Missouri anymore?
It’s Sunday morning, I really don’t want to be grumpy…
The below can be found at the bottom right of the main page.
And NY is pink on the map!
Thanks to stick-in-the-mud buzzkilling state legislators, wine may only be delivered to the following states:
California, Colorado, Connecticut, District Of Columbia, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Nebraska, Nevada, **New York, **North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Washington, Wyoming
Yes sirree!
A bottle of this wine got lost somehow and came to my door here in New York state (Yay!) looking for direction and purpose in its life. I told it not to worry – there would be a family/friends Octoberfest celebration on Saturday and it would be a welcome guest.
Six Octoberfest celebrants had tastes and offered opinions, including myself and fellow Wooter councile. All of us had been celebrating with various German foods and beers prior to the wine tasting. None of us were drunk, which some might say means we weren’t doing Octoberfest correctly. I say any Octoberfest celebration that includes steamed clams and two kinds of chili (in addition to the traditional German foods) is awesome, and whether we end up sloppy drunk or not is irrelevant. 
Back to the wine. Color was midway between pale straw and what I typically think of as “Chardonnay yellow.” Swirling in the glass produced thin legs. On the nose I got apple and typical oak scents.
On the palate the dominant note was apple. Overall I’d say the wine was dry, though not bone-dry, and delivered a nice acid tartness. (FWIW, I tend to like acid tartness more than most people I’ve tasted wines with.) Three of the six tasters thought it a bit too tart for straight sipping, though they liked it better paired with foods. We had some Honey Crisp apple slices, and I found the apple paired extremely well with the wine, as did most of the others. One of the six thought it both sweetish and tart, but was distracted by the tartness and overall didn’t like it.
Oak flavors of butter and vanilla were also present, though I wouldn’t call this a butter bomb. If your favorite Chardonnays are Toasted Head, Kendall-Jackson Reserve or Rombauer, this one may underwhelm you, offering too little of the toasted oak characteristics you like. However, if you prefer unoaked Chardonnays like Iron Horse or the various so-called “Naked” Chards, you might consider this one too oaky.
I actually like both kinds of Chardonnay, thinking of them as two different wines appropriate for different moods and foods. This one struck a reasonable compromise, which worked fine for me but might not work at all for those who strongly prefer one style over the other. SWMBO’s favorite Chardonnay is Toasted Head, which has notes of butterscotch typical of some Chards aged in toasted oak barrels. She liked the Twisted Vine Chard, saying it had a ‘round,’ subtly buttery flavor, but didn’t get that butterscotch note she seeks and (significantly) she did not ask me to take advantage of today’s offer.
I cannot tell you how this wine developed over time, because with six tasters it didn’t last more than about a half hour.
Seeing the price of today’s offer, at ~$17.50/bottle shipped I think it’s a good deal. I’m considering placing an order, though without SWMBO’s explicit request, I’m not sure I will. (I tend to be the decision-maker when it comes to reds, and she tends to be for whites.)
On another note, I am very happy to see that New York is finally back on the ship-to list. Cheers!
We just tried this yesterday and liked it. Definitely more butter and oak than Jon’s other chards for sure. There is acid for sure but we didn’t get to the level of this post.
For those looking for a filtered white with more traditional CA butter and oak the. This could be good for you.
Thank you SDFREEDIVE & MOONDIGGER for your reviews. Yup - the TV does still have solid acid.
Half of this lot started out in SS, the other half was from oak.
I pulled some for my SS Insp Chard and picked out the best barrels for my Insp reserve Chard.
TV resulted because it still had acid but it also had more oak and a little butter creating a third style.
I totally recommend drinking with food and YES this wine will age. Something I’m known for with my Chardonnay.
Cheers…
JP
Jon, had a bottle last night of the TV Zin. Tasty stuff.
I really thought there would be more conversation and enthusiasm for this wine than there is. I liked this wine quite a bit, especially at this price point.
I should have mentioned in my tasting notes above that three of the six tasters in my group were not regular wine drinkers and were a bit surprised by the acidity/moderate tartness. It’s really not overwhelmingly tart, IMO, and I believe anybody who’s had a variety of white wines with reasonable acidity will appreciate this more than the infrequent wine drinkers I tasted it with.
I agree. This is a very very approachable wine for both red and white drinkers. Being it has butter, oak and acidity but NOT overwhelming in any of those characteristics lends to its approachability. It can go well with food or by itself actually - we tried it by itself.