discordant satisfaction, sonoma chardonnay, and winter

discordant satisfaction, sonoma chardonnay, and winter

Being alive on this earth of course never provides a guarantee of consistency. Yes, we are verily creatures of habit, with many of us [exponentially] more so adherent to familiarity; but fortunately, due to that discordant miscellany that is our 'nature', we are also at turns creatures of curiosity. The human soul allows us dips into life enigmatic, removed from the consistent, the perpetual--again, many of us comprised of this tendancy more so than others--and this is truly one of the most remarkable conditions of life: we actually can and do slip in and out of those enigmatic, discursive meanderings through the universe and back into the logical and tangible and constant. The human experience has no limitations. So, as I am interestingly at a moment in my own life eschewing many things conventional and uninspired, and instead sanctioning what is visceral and purely intuitive and true for me--not imprudently, mind you-- all of this trickles its way, as all things do, to my behavior with wine choices.

This I observe with amusement either in the winter when I conflictingly crave white wines, or in the summer when only reds sound delicious to me. And so an evening in this unevenly frigid November, ducking into Vintage Station in Gulfport, directed me to a chilled white: somewhat unusually for me--a chardonnay. How lovely is it to be reminded of the beauty of Sonoma wines, though--perhaps my favorite California provenance. Frei Brothers has been among the wineries there to epitomize the essence of Sonoma County, and the winery is upheld by its renown for stellar, expressive, beautifully reliable wines.

There really is nothing quite like a chardonnay from Sonoma--often these wines achieve a perfect dichotomous parity, meshing the enlivening crackle, austerity, and poise of the best chardonnays of Burgundy with the mellowed vuluptuousness one expects from a ripe New World chard. Sonoma's microclimates are incredibly diverse with the checkered terrain of mountain valleys and rivers, but for the most part cool-climate varietals unabashedly shine there: pinot noir and chardonnay most famously. Frei Brothers' Russian River Valley chardonnay truly has flourished with that dichotomous parity. Beautifully aromatic of green apples and tropical fruits, minerality freshens the nose, and on the palate there is a soft, silken pear presence. As this chardonnay has completed malolactic fermentation, there abundantly is that glowing butteriness that results. The mellowness of this ripely flavored wine is tempered by those cooling effects of the Russian River and the Pacific, balancing the wine with vibrant acidity.

So in my yearning for a characterful and crisp white on a frigid night, strangely enough, my intuitive, discursive and illogical propensity was satisfied by this Sonoma chardonnay. I suspect that this frequent urge to mismatch wine with season has a bit to do with an embrace of things--surroundings, season, weather--simply as they are, and with that, it is intuitive.