Kicking Off "Found in the Cellar": Jason's Vineyard 2001 Chardonnay

By Lenn Thompson, Executive Editor

I recently spent what most sane people would consider an inordinate amount of time reorganizing my wine cellar. In doing so, I found a number of wines that I had forgotten I had. Some of these 'lost' wines weren't really lost at all -- I hid them from myself so that I wouldn't drink them.

But, I also discovered quite a few bottles that I simply forgot that I had. Those wines are the inspiration behind what I hope becomes a near-weekly feature here on the site, "Found in the Cellar," which will feature posts about our experiences drinking wines we've forgotten about.

Many will be local and somewhat aged, but other won't. And I hope that my fellow NYCR contributors will get in on this too if they stumble upon something interesting in their respective cellars.

To kick off this new series, I present a bottle of Jason's Vineyard 2001 Chardonnay ($19 at release). When I first tasted and reviewed this wine in 2005, I described it as:

"Barrel fermented and aged sur lies for eight months in new French oak, but the oak character isn’t overbearing or overwhelming. It offers an aromatic nose of crisp apples, pears and subtle toasty oak nuances. When over-chilled, the palate is a bit sharp, but as the wine warms, this medium-bodied chardonnay begins to unfurl, displaying excellent, controlled balance between fruit, oak influence and acidity. Very Burgundian in style, the finish is lengthy with honey pear flavors that fade slowly over several seconds. It was my favorite of the wines I tasted."

Please forgive my mention of "Burgundian in style." I threw that around way more than I should have in those days.

Six years later and ten years after it was made, it has -- not at all surprisingly -- changed quite a bit.

Just about all of the fruit is gone now, never to be tasted again. It's mostly faded wood flavor-wise with a bug spray note that isn't all that pleasant. But, there is a hint of acidity left that, especially right out of the fridge, keeps the wine 

I've had a few early-2000s Long Island chardonnays in the last year. This is probably the one most beyond peak, but that doesn't detract from the fun I have tasting these older wines. 2001 was 'the year' before 2005, 2007 and 2010 came along. I'm looking forward to getting into more of these 'lost wines' from my cellar.

Comments

[Kovas]

Don't think I've ever read a description of a wine as "faded wood flavor-wise with a bug spray note" and didn't feel like it was a total loss with what else was written. Nice job.

[Ed]

This new feature sounds like it could be great fun!

We badly need to do a reorg and to redo the inventory of the cellar. Things got messed up somewhere. A couple of weeks ago I was holding 2 bottles of Shaw 2007 Pinot Noir ion my hands and looking at an inventory that said we only had 1..... I'm not looking forward to it.