More often than I care to admit, a wine that I open at home, after having tasted it in a winery tasting room and liked it enough to spare some of my wine dollars for it, doesn’t taste like I remember. I find myself thinking, hmm, it’s not that it’s bad or anything, but I don’t think I would have bought it if it tasted like this in the tasting room. I had this experience quite a bit with the wines we purchased on our honeymoon. We were really just starting to get seriously into wine then, and by the time we got around to drinking some of that wine, our palates had evolved and our tastes had changed.
The other night I pulled our a bottle of the 2006 Lambert Bridge Viognier. We paid $30 for this at the winery, it clocked in at 14.1% alcohol by volume, and had a real cork closure. I prefer Viognier either unoaked or very lightly oaked, so this wine surprised me.
On the nose I first smelled sweet oak, and not a small amount of it. Under that, I got lemon, vanilla, honey, pineapple, and pear. It had all the classic fruit aromas of a Viognier, the oak just seemed a it heavy to me. In the mouth I found pear, green apple, pineapple, honey, and tropical fruit.
In the mouth the wine seemed viscous, but had nice acidity and structure. I found slight buttery/oak flavors in the mouth, and more oak on the nose than I normally prefer. I think we should have had some food with this wine.
Filed under: California, Viognier, Wine |
Wannabe Wino Wine Blog 
I like you blog. Keep writing but most importantly, keep enjoying your wine!
Oh I know what you mean – we had some pretty good wines at this little winery here in Michigan, and the one that was my favorite there, I bought a couple of bottles of. They’ve been… disappointing. I’m a little scared to open the last bottle I’ve got of it.
Thanks Pennsylvaniawinewanderer!
I have that happen to me all the time with stuff I buy in the tasting room Cheron!