Wine notes help more than ratings

The Wine Spectator, a preeminent wine magazine, recently labeled Sterling Vineyard’s 2007 Vintner’s Collection Chardonnay as a “Best Value” for a California Chardonnay with a rating of “88”. This wine retails for around $12 a bottle.

For readers who are unfamiliar with wine ratings, a number of publications have their writers taste various wines and then provide ratings and tasting notes for each.

Wine Spectator and Wine Enthusiast are two examples of magazines that have ratings as well as articles about the wine industry. The Wine Advocate, published by Robert Parker, consists purely of tasting notes and ratings without any advertising or articles. Each of these publications rates wines on a 100-point system.

Although their guidelines vary, a rating above 95 points generally is an exceptional wine; between 90 and 95 is an outstanding wine; a rating in the upper 80s is for very good wines. These ratings are specific to the varietal tasted, so you can’t compare a 90-point chardonnay against a 90-point pinot grigio.

And while the rating is merely a number assigned by a given writer, the truly important facts about the wine are found in the companion tasting notes. These notes describe not only the wine’s style, aging potential and value, but also contain a description of the aroma and flavors tasted.

Tasting notes aid me more than the rating in determining which wines to purchase, because I know the characteristics that I enjoy in a wine. (Both the Wine Spectator and Wine Enthusiast can be purchased at book stores and some wine shops, while the Wine Advocate is available only by subscription.)

Sterling’s 2007 Vintner’s Collection Chardonnay is a very high production wine — 345,000 cases of this vintage were made — and I had little trouble locating bottles at several local wine shops and grocery stores.

In my opinion, this chardonnay is very well made and has a refreshing taste, although it was a little on the light side for a chardonnay.

It pairs well with stone crab claws, grilled mahi mahi and loaded baked potatoes. The wine has a slight aroma of tropical fruits, along with hints of apple and pear on the finish, and tastes slightly oaked.

I would have never guessed either the price or the growing region.

The grapes used to produce this wine hail from the Central Coast of California, a region that stretches from Monterey to Santa Barbara.

As one would expect from such a large area, the Central Coast region has widely diverse growing conditions that allow the winemaker to blend grapes that impart a variety of flavors in the finished product.

It should be noted that the 2007 growing season in this region had lower rainfall than normal and a late spring that delayed budbreak. Budbreak is the first appearance on the vines of the shoots that grow to bear grapes. The lack of rain also created a lower yield and smaller berries, thereby producing more concentrated and flavorful grapes.

If the 2007 Sterling provides any indication of the flavor of these concentrated grapes, it will be interesting to taste other 2007 Central Coast Chardonnays.

Next week: I will review other chardonnays that are produced in a different style than the 2007 chardonnays.