Mark Aselstine
 
July 18, 2013 | Mark Aselstine

#WineChat 7/17/2013 Review

Last night brought a rather unique opportunity to take part in #winechat with the Santa Barbara County Vintners Association. The Association brought together six wineries, who shipped one wine each to ten different wine bloggers, myself included.

I’ll cover the tasting over the next few days, otherwise these entries are going to get out of control rather quickly. I’ll also take the time over the coming weeks to feature each of the six wineries whom were kind enough to share their wine, their story and their time with all of us.

I lived in Santa Barbara for five years and greatly enjoyed my time there, so I’m fairly familiar with the wines and growing regions of the central coast, Santa Barbara in peculiar, but this event was a good reminder for me of the wide range of wines and wine styles being crafted in Santa Barbara County.

How Come Bill Got to Drive?To start, I have to say a quick thank you to Bill Eyer of Cuvee Corner, someone I’ve actually worked a day of bottling with in the past as Morgen McLaughlin of the Santa Barbara Vintner’s Association for putting this together. As it turns out Morgen comes highly recommended from her time with the Finger Lakes Wine County, where she certainly helped the region gain a following with the wine community, especially in and around New York City. Welcome to California Morgen, there might not be a prettier and easier place to live than Santa Barbara County. I hope you enjoy your time there as much as I did.Wine #1: Fontes & Phillips 2010 Sauvignon Blanc: My notes were pretty simple. It’s a solid New Zealand in style (although lighter on the acidity) Sauvignon Blanc that has enough minerality to keep me interesting and make me sure this isn’t a Chardonnay. A good wine. A nice effort at the $15-$18 price point, where you don’t often find a ton of easily drinkable, yet interesting white wine’s. At 112 cases of production, it’s something I’d happy ship. What others said:

Wine #2: Baehner Fournier Vineyards 2012 Sauvignon Blanc One of the reasons people inside the wine industry, as well as consumers love events like this is the opportunity to compare and contrast wines from similar areas. In this case, we have vineyard locations only a few miles apart, but dramatically different wines. My notes show that there is more acidity here. Personally, I like that in my Sauvignon Blanc, but I worry that some of my newer wine drinking customers aren’t accustomed to it. Definitively a Bordeaux styled Sauvignon Blanc, this is a nice effort at under $20 as well. Creamy citrus is listed on the official tasting notes and that’s both a flavor as well as a smell which came through big time. It’s just a great summer wine. I also said:

What Others Said:

Wine #3: Palmina Winery 2011 Arneis I’ll have to be honest, when I first received my tasting list I assumed this wasn’t a varietal specific wine, but instead simply a name of a blend. It turns out Arneis is a grape, about to go extinct across the world, with its roots in Italy. After a bit of research, this is the wine I was most excited to try. It isn’t often that we find something truly unique within the wine industry. I said:

Others Said:

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