People probably thought we had gone completely off the deep end with this choice. A three year old California Chardonnay for $12 in the middle of winter? Granted, it is a bit outside our usual ‘M.O.’, especially for a crew that has announced they are not usually fans of 'typical' California Chardonnay. Well, that was a couple hundred cases ago and now we are here to announce that the last load we got will be, well, the last load. For those that hadn't heard the story yet, we'll explain. First of all, this isn’t typical California Chardonnay, that being defined generally as a fat, oaky, blowsy, in-your-face cocktail style of Chardonnay buttressed by pronounced wood and/or residual sugar. Nothing wrong with that, mind you, if that is what you like. But such wines have limited applications with food and most examples would have been getting their 'fade' on by now.
Charles Ortman never bought into that whole 'more is better' phase. Having started his career some forty years ago, Ortman was decidedly old school in his Chardonnay styling with bright fruit, fresh acidity, and oak as a flavoring agent rather than as a central theme. He built up Meridian Winery and sold it years ago to establish his own Ortman Family label in 1998. Ortman is known in some winemaking circles as 'Mr. Chardonnay' and, in the old days, California Chardonnay had the balance and presence to consider aging.
This one at age three is still quite fresh with notes of apple, buttered popcorn and toast, the fruit at that succinct point where it still has vigor but is starting to show the roundness and complexity that only well aged Chardonnay can. Most Chardonnays can’t develop this way because they don’t start out balanced and don’t sport the structure to do so.
To us this one is at its perfect point of drinkability. This beautifully proportioned, single vineyard Chardonnay had a more-than-justifiable retail price of $24, particularly considering that many of the single vineyard bottled Chards have price tags in the $40s and $50s. This is the kind of Chardonnay you can drink glass after glass (responsibly, of course) because of its lift and brightness.
'Chuck' recently decided to hang up his thief and retire from the wine business. This is a sad day for long-time fans of Ortman, and there are quite a few of those folks out there as we found out when we promoted their value Chardonnay 'O2' 2010 in December. We're selling this very stylish Firepeak Vineyard bottling for the same price as that entry level bottling...half of Firepeak's original tab. At $24, it's a nice Chardonnay and a fine legacy for a winemaker that did it his way. At $12, it's also a steal! It is last call..
