So, is the Garcia label a gimmick to sell wine? Probably. Is the wine good enough to buy? Definitely.

A lighter chardonnay (particularly for California), this is a great wine to have before dinner, or to sip at a club while dancing/twirling… especially in one-to-two years from now.

The nose has a lot of yeast, bright apple and lemon, as well as a decent amount of vanillin oak.

The palate is fairly lightweight, but extremely well balanced. It has plenty of acidic lemon, slightly tart apple and a mouthfeel that – at room temperature – is creamier than you’d think.

Good enough now, this is a white that will be even better after a couple years of bottle age. The acidity is bright enough to keep it from going flabby or lifeless, and it has enough fruit to ensure it’ll still have some when opened in 2005 or ’06.

A California chardonnay that’s age-worthy? Now that’s a novelty.

Cheers,
TSW

Novelty Wine (n) – A usually pejorative term for wine that relies on a marketing gimmick to sell often-mediocre grape juice.

I’m really not sure what the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia has to do with wine. No doubt he enjoyed his share of it, but to be honest, other intoxicating substances more readily leap to mind when Jerry's name comes up.

Of course, he had quite a connection with Northern California, but it seems a more direct tie to San Francisco and Marin than Sonoma.

This, added to my natural skepticism of novelty wines, kept me away from this chard for a while. But, when a WoW subscriber with proven excellent taste recommended it, I picked some up for a blind tasting. Thanks, Steve L. I owe you one!