 Oh, welcome back to Exotic Wine Travel. I am your host, Matthew Horky. And I'm Sherene Tan. Welcome back to the show today. We have an exciting show. I know Sherene is very excited about this. Yeah, I wasn't feeling well yesterday, so I missed out on all the tasting. That's so... Back in full speed. You're excited to guess. We are doing high-end Chardonnay from Santa Rita Hills in Santa Barbara County. You excited? Mm-hmm. Before we get started, guys, I wanna let you know this video has not been paid for in any way, shape, or form, but if you do like these videos, if you find value in them, check out our Guide to the Wines of Santa Barbara called... Sipping Santa Barbara. Recommended wines and producers. It's on Amazon, PDF, Kindle, E-Pub. I'll put that up on the screen. We're gonna get ready to taste these wines. We poured them into these glasses using our Corvind Model 2 Elite. Thank you to Corvind for allowing us to use, to send us a test sample to use. We wouldn't have gotten through all these wines without it, right? And we're pouring... We don't have a speed tool. Yeah. That's okay. We'll step on it. We're pouring into these beautiful Gabriel Gold Edition hand-blown glasses. These are beautiful, hand-blown, hand-crafted. Only 95 grams per glass. They're super light. My dad's always scared he's gonna break them. Crack it one glass, man. Okay, let's get ready to rock and roll. So, when you're talking about Santa Barbara County and talking about high-quality Pinot Noir Chardonnay, you have the argument of Santa Rita Hills, which is a little bit close to the ocean. There's like a wind tunnel, so winds constantly going through there. And then the Santa Maria Valley, which is open. There's no obstructions. The cold air flows right into it. Yeah, so we're really excited. We tasted some Santa Maria Chardonnays. Now this is all hardcore Santa Rita Hills Chardonnay. What do you like Santa Rita Hills Chardonnay the most? Why? I appreciate both apple on both areas. I find that, first of all, Santa Maria tends to be a little bit more floral, a little bit more generous on the fruit. Typically, where Santa Rita Hills is more, has more salinity, mineral, the fruit is more in control. And I like the Santa Rita Hills better. And I find that Santa Rita Hills Chardonnays seems to have a longer aging potential. But that said, I know that a lot of people actually like Santa Maria more than Santa Maria. All right, hardcore Santa Maria. Yeah, Santa Maria. Do you like Santa Maria more? I don't know. I like both so much. Santa Rita Hills does have this nice mineral quality because it's an old sea bed, so there's fossils, diatomaceous earth, they call it. So let's get started. Enough blabbering onto the wine. So the first one, we tasted this lady's pain in the wards. We have to give a shout out to her. This is the La Montagne Chardonnay Santa Rita Hills 2015 from the Kessler Heck Vineyard on Highway 246, which we've been there before. Kimberly Smith, she actually produces very small amount of wine. She was not even a winemaker. She was just curious about why good wine costed what it did. She sought out Wes Hagen. They started making wine. She reached out to us actually. We did not visit her when we did our first research. So I gave a shout out and her pain in the wards were good. I called her, I called the wines La Montagne in the first episode, so I made a mistake. I think it's La Montagne. Let's get started. When we tasted her Kessler Heck pain in the wards, it was serious age worthy wine. Yeah, it was lovely. If you don't want to spit, you can just dump it back into this and just take a little sip. We don't have a spit bucket, I forgot to get one. Let's get started here. What do you think? For me, very good barrel integration. Fantastic barrel integration. Chalkiness, melon, the tropical fruit, the pineapple flavors. What do you think? I thought it was interesting that on the first smell I get a little bit of a guava bringing fruit notes to it. Ooh. And the malvets. It's salty and spicy. What else, you want? I love the mouthfeel of this wine. And it has some salinity in the finish. I don't know how long she, she barrel firmens. I don't know how long she keeps us in barrel. I don't know, I'm guessing 12 months. So her reds, I know 18 months. This is medium body and delicious stuff, right? This is fantastic, I think. Are you high on this like I am? I'm quite high on it. I like the nose a lot. I find it intriguing, a little bit different from typical Chardonnay that I get from Senderita. This is spicy snappy. Okay, it doesn't act like a Sauvignon Blanc. But it's got the snappy, spicy finish of Sauvignon Blanc. You know that I get sometimes? From the barrel, I guess. Exactly. Medium body, this is not a huge fat Chardonnay. This is really good stuff. I mean, I'm very... I think on the nose is more center Maria-like. Yeah, me too. But in the mouth definitely is Senderita. I'm going there. 4.4 out of 5 on this. 4.3, I think I'm 4.3, I got a little excited. I think it's still very, very good. What do you think? I like it. Yeah, it's exciting wine. Shall we move on? Good job, Kimberly. Actually, all your wines showed really well, especially for somebody that's only been making wine for... I think she's only been making wine 2010 was her first vintage, so impressive. I love the tightness of this one. Sorry, just filling the off the palate. Let's move on. One of the great packages in Santa Barbara County. This is the Liquid Farm, Senderita Hills, White Hill Chardonnay from 2015. He, Jeff Nelson is the owner. He likes old world style wines. The White Hill, he kind of models after Chablis because he feels like the diatomaceous earth in Senderita Hills mimics the chalky soys of Burgundy. For you, hardcore Santa Barbara wine geeks out there. He has the vineyard percent here, 27% bent rock, 24% La Rinconada, 21% Zotovich, 15% Rita's crown, and actually 13% of Kessler Heck, which this is made up of. You're excited about trying this vintage? I'm very excited, yeah. The first time when Matt saw the label, he said, oh, is that a tonic or something? This is really interesting. So apparently it's kind of like a made up picture, but it's supposed to be a half tonic and half, no, beetroot and dandelion on the top. And it's textured, great label, just great label. These are critic darlings. Oh, forgot to tell, this is 50 US dollars. This is 42 US dollars. It's supposed to be mimicked off of Chablis. These are critic darlings. Let's, even though they've only, they've only done wine for a few vintages. Let's give this a little bit of a smell. First of all, we have considerably darker color than the Kessler Heck. Not considerably, just a touch darker, like it matters for white anyway. Very minerally and chalky. Well, if I closed my eyes and smelled this, I would think it's champagne. Really, that chalky, super chalky for me. I'm getting more white pear than I am tropical fruit. I'm definitely getting a lot of lemon and chalk. Yeah, so more, this really does act like a cool climate chardonnay, which I'm very impressed with. Good barrel integration, let me give this a go. Boy, the acidity. Mouth cleansing acidity. Like, like lemon, like really tart. This doesn't, he says this is more of a Chablisa. It's a little bit riper as an, it's not steely like a Chablis. This is barrel fermented, but still shows cooler weather fruit, bracing acidity. What do you think of this? Mighty aging potential. Yeah, this baby can lay down because the acidity is so high. What do you think of this? As compared to the? I'm fond of it, but I would keep it an agent for a while. I wouldn't drink it right now, I think. But because aging potential quality, I think I'm about 4.4 on this. 4.3, 4.4, I think this is very good stuff. The Kessler Heck from La Montagne is a little bit easier to drink now, but this is serious, serious stuff. I haven't tasted that many Chardonnay that come so close to being Chablis like, this does not be one of those. Yeah. You want to move on? Yeah, please. Good job. Wow, the acidity is so tart. Let's move on to the Liquid Farm Golden Slope from 2015, 52 US dollars. Golden Slope, this is more of his Cope de Bones play. So, I think White Burgundy here, 23% clove pepe vineyard, 23% reed is crowned, 19% betrack, 13% lauren canada, 13% Kessler Heck, 9% zotovich, it's on the back. That's just for hardcore geeks. You don't really need to know that stuff. Let's give this a little bit of a smell, shall we? These are all Barrow Fermented. This has deeper color, definitely smells riper. I think he nailed it, man. He really nailed it. You think it's White Burgundy? This is really bone-style. Yeah. Mm, like, this shows a little bit more wood, but it's a sweet coconut, sweet vanilla. It's not coconut when thinking big American oak, but it's really nice. That's my, okay, I won't call it upset, but I don't really drink Chardonnay outside of France, because, of course, you still find a lot of good examples of Chardonnay's all over the world, but people tend to put too much oak in the Chardonnay, and there's just not enough food intensity. This is a fine example that there's enough food intensity. This is very Pouligny Montrache. Ask. What do you think? Wow, lovely, lovely, lovely. This is a fantastic effort. 4.5. All right, that's what I think I'm gonna go. Yeah, I don't score, though. But, you know, she doesn't score. And again, you know, scoring's funny. You know, we just opened these wines on first impression. That's kind of a good thing. Not a good thing, because wines change, evolve, our moods change, yada, yada, yada, but I do use that as a gauge for what I like in our Vavino account. What do you think of this? Perfect wood integration. It's big, but it's not fat. It has acidity, it has tropical fruit flavors, some vanilla from the barrel, a little bit of sweet spice on the finish. And the longhand palate. What do you think? Fantastic. You love it. Fantastic. I'm 4.5 on this, I think. Yeah. Jeff, and this isn't even the top. Their top, I think their top Chardonnay is called four. So look out for that. These are, I mean, all of these wines, exceptional. You know, the only exception, you know, I don't think that, I think I wanna stole this away and not drink it for a while. These two, very happy to drink now. Beautiful wines, right? The thing, the cool thing about Chardonnay is it's really a winemaker's grip as well. I mean, there's really not much of a what is a better Chardonnay. It's really so different style. These three wines are so different. Excellent wines. I mean, excellent show. I'm gonna put the discount code for the Gabriel Glass up on the screen. You get 15% off the Standard Edition or the Alpha Decanter. We're not affiliates. This is just something nice for you. Check out our guide, the Wines of Santa Barbara, Sipping Santa Barbara. Anything you wanna close up on on this high-end Chardonnay. I'm so hung out on this one. Thinking about what I should make to go with this. You think this will go well with the chicken rest today? Probably, but I would want something with cream. Like a chicken, roasted chicken with some kind of cream. Or lobster with butter. Oh, no. So guys, if you like this video, please subscribe to our YouTube channel, Exotic Wine Travel. I will see you at the next episode.