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750ml
Bottle:
$14.90
$15.83
12 bottles:
$14.60
Lime juice, chalk, plumeria and peach make for a zippy, yet ripe nose on this bottling. The palate's citrusy core...
750ml
Bottle:
$16.94
$18.33
12 bottles:
$16.63
Lively lavender aromas elevate the dark berry and thyme scents on the nose of this bottling. The core of blueberry...
750ml
Bottle:
$15.90
$17.50
Light straw in appearance and reveals aromas of lemon, white peach, and jasmine. On the palate, intriguing notes of...
750ml
Bottle:
$15.38
$17.09
12 bottles:
$15.05
Vivid ruby. Cherry, cassis and succulent herbs on the fragrant nose, joined by a slowly building tobacco nuance....
750ml
Bottle:
$15.99
Fragrant nose displays scintillating aromas of pineapple, Asian pear, vanilla
crème and toasted almonds, with notes...
750ml
Bottle:
$34.73
$36.01
6 bottles:
$32.41
Defined by the cooler 2021 vintage, this Chardonnay offers beautiful aromas of pineapple and lemon pie accompanied by...
750ml
Bottle:
$14.99
$16.66
Foxglove Chardonnay always represents a great value. With this wine you have the richness of fruit from California's...
750ml
Bottle:
$19.38
$20.40
12 bottles:
$16.63
The Intercept Chardonnay is medium-bodied with spiced apples, citrus, and biscuit notes. Rich from barrel...
375ml
Bottle:
$11.35
$12.61
Clean lines of black cherry and warm baking spices draw the nose into this widely available bottling, perfect for...
750ml
Bottle:
$18.07
$20.08
12 bottles:
$15.83
Clean lines of black cherry and warm baking spices draw the nose into this widely available bottling, perfect for...
750ml
Bottle:
$21.49
$24.00
A golden hue in the glass, this bottling from a vineyard first planted in 1976 offers bold aromas of lemon peel,...
750ml
Bottle:
$37.66
$40.49
The 2021 Chardonnay is very ripe in style with scents of banana chip, apple pie, jasmine, allspice and brown sugar....
1.5Ltr
Bottle:
$42.00
6 bottles:
$41.16
Limpid straw-yellow. Vibrant, mineral-driven citrus and orchard fruit, honeysuckle, fennel and quinine qualities on...
750ml
Bottle:
$30.40
12 bottles:
$22.53
The 2019 Chardonnay Oceano Spanish Springs Vineyard comes from a cooler site outside of San Luis Obispo that's just a...
750ml
Bottle:
$17.10
$18.00
12 bottles:
$14.25
Robert Hall Merlot has aromas of ripe black cherry, dried herbs, and spice. The wine is full-bodied with rich...
750ml
Bottle:
$21.00
12 bottles:
$20.58
The deep, dark ruby color of this full-bodied Merlot is complimented by rich aromas of ripe black cherry, dried...
750ml
Bottle:
$46.44
$51.60
Opens with heady aromas of rose petal, plum, blackberry jam, cooked strawberry, ripe black cherry and baking spice. A...
750ml
Bottle:
$55.88
Aromas of fresh pear, lime blossom and caramel, with notes of meyer lemon, kiwi skin, fresh churned butter on fresh...
Chardonnay Merlot Sherry United States California San Luis Obispo Wine
Of all the white wine grape varietals, surely the one which has spread the furthest and is most widely appreciated is the Chardonnay. This green skinned grape is now grown all over the Old and New Worlds, from New Zealand to the Americas, from England to Chile, and is one of the first varietals people think of when considering white wine grapes. Perhaps this is because of its huge popularity which reached a peak in the 1990s, thanks to new technologies combining with traditional methods to bring the very best features out of the Chardonnay grape, and allow its unique qualities to shine through. Most fine Chardonnay wines use a process known as malolactic fermentation, wherein the malic acids in the grape juice are converted to lactic acids, allowing a creamier, buttery nature to come forward in the wine. No grape varietal is better suited to this process than Chardonnay, which manages to balance these silky, creamy notes with fresh white fruit flavors beautifully.
With its dark blue colored fruits and high juice content, Merlot varietal grapes have long been a favorite of wine producers around the globe, with it being found in vineyards across Europe, the Americas and elsewhere in the New World. One of the distinguishing features of Merlot grapes is the fact that they have a relatively low tannin content and an exceptionally soft and fleshy character, meaning they are capable of producing incredibly rounded and mellow wines. This mellowness is balanced with plenty of flavor, however, and has made Merlot grapes the varietal of choice for softening other, more astringent and tannin-heavy wines, often resulting in truly exceptional produce. Merlot is regarded as one of the key 'Bordeaux' varietals for precisely this reason; when combined with the drier Cabernet Sauvignon, it is capable of blending beautifully to produce some of the finest wines available in the world.
Sherry is made in a unique way using the solera system, which blends fractional shares of young wine from oak barrels with older, more mature wines. Sherry has no vintage date because it is blended from a variety of years. Rare, old sherries can contain wine that dates back 25 to 50 years or more, the date the solera was begun. If a bottle has a date on it, it probably refers to the date the company was founded.
Most sherries begin with the Palomino grape, which enjoys a generally mild climate in and around the triad of towns known as the "Sherry Triangle" and grows in white, limestone and clay soils that look like beach sand. The Pedro Ximenez type of sweet sherry comes from the Pedro Ximenez grape.
Sherry is a "fortified" wine, which means that distilled, neutral spirits are used to fortify the sherry. The added liquor means that the final sherry will be 16 to 20 percent alcohol (higher than table wines) and that it will have a longer shelf life than table wines.
Of all the New World wine countries, perhaps the one which has demonstrated the most flair for producing high quality wines - using a combination of traditional and forward-thinking contemporary methods - has been the United States of America. For the past couple of centuries, the United States has set about transforming much of its suitable land into vast vineyards, capable of supporting a wide variety of world-class grape varietals which thrive on both the Atlantic and the Pacific coastlines. Of course, we immediately think of sun-drenched California in regards to American wines, with its enormous vineyards responsible for the New World's finest examples of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot based wines, but many other states have taken to viticulture in a big way, with impressive results. Oregon, Washington State and New York have all developed sophisticated and technologically advanced wine cultures of their own, and the output of U.S wineries is increasing each year as more and more people are converted to their produce.
California as a wine producing region has grown in size and importance considerably over the past couple of centuries, and today is the proud producer of more than ninety percent of the United States' wines. Indeed, if California was a country, it would be the fourth largest producer of wine in the world, with a vast range of vineyards covering almost half a million acres. The secret to California's success as a wine region has a lot to do with the high quality of its soils, and the fact that it has an extensive Pacific coastline which perfectly tempers the blazing sunshine it experiences all year round. The winds coming off the ocean cool the vines, and the natural valleys and mountainsides which make up most of the state's wine regions make for ideal areas in which to cultivate a variety of high quality grapes.