Beautiful deep gold color with a fat and generous nose of caramel and grapefruit. In the mouth very chewy, burnt caramel, acacia honey, pineapple, vanilla and melons, a nice finish veering towards bitter orange rind. Big and bold but well balanced -- not too fruit forward -- and with (I thought) well integrated oak, a lovely example of a CA chardonnay in the "traditional CA" style.
To my palate this will get better over the next couple of years, but was delicious now as well. Very powerful, it did not really flatter the simple grilled trout (although the trout high-lit the wine!) and would stand up very well on its own or as wine-maker Tom S. suggests, with a good cigar.
My thanks to Tom and Mike T. who enabled us to taste this great example of pure CA fruit. I look forward to trying the '02 soon.
I don't know what the commercial name will be finally, but you lovers of great, classic CA chards should definitely seek this one out. Now all we need to do is set up some european distribution!
-E