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2008 Napa Valley Estate Chardonnay
April 21, 2011 by David
Filed under Chardonnay, Winemaker Notes
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Flavor profile: Crisp and clean on the palate with green apple, ripe pear, fresh citrus, toasty oak and vanilla.
2008 Vintage: A roller-coaster of a growing season yielding low quantities of high quality fruit
Drink now and through: 2013
Chardonnay and food: We’re always saying that a solid acidity makes the wine more food friendly and this wine makes is a great test case. If you look in Colleen’s Kitchen you’ll see that there are beaucoup recipes paired with our Chardonnay – everything from sautéed shellfish or salmon, to roast pork, to cream-based pasta dishes! One of Colleen’s favorites? The Chicken with Meyer Lemon, Fennel & Olives with Gremolata.
Estate Chardonnay and Chicken with Meyer Lemon, Fennel & Olives with Gremolata
March 15, 2010 by David
Filed under Blog, Wine & Recipe of The Month
As the days get warmer and longer it makes a nice change to enjoy some lighter fare. Colleen’s new recipe brings together a delicious melange of your favorite flavors – the zesty lemon makes a great counterpoint to the rich, buttery olives. Add in some garlic, licorice-like fennel and woodsy rosemary and you have a real treat! It makes a beautiful presentation when company’s coming, but it’s low-impact enough for a Tuesday night, too. Just a quick marinade and sauté and the oven does the rest. With a glass of our crisp, fruit-driven Estate Chardonnay, any day becomes an occasion. Cheers!
Ingredients:
1 whole chicken, cut into pieces
3 Meyer lemons, seeded, cut into wedges
2 teaspoons kosher salt
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon rosemary, minced
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1 large fennel bulb, 2 T. fronds reserved
1/4 cup parsley, minced
2 tablespoons lemon zest
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 cup green olives
1 cup Goosecross Chardonnay
1/2 cup chicken broth
Directions
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Wash the chicken and pat dry. In a bowl, toss the lemon wedges, salt, garlic, rosemary, and pepper, then add the chicken and toss again. Set aside to marinate for 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, trim the fennel bulb and reserve 2 tablespoons fronds. Cut the fennel into 1” wedges and set aside.
Heat the olive oil in an oval skillet over medium-high heat. Remove the chicken from the marinade, and sauté until nicely browned. Add the fennel wedges, lemons with their juices, olives, wine, and broth.
Transfer the skillet to the oven and roast for 45 minutes. Remove the chicken from the oven and let rest up to 10 minutes.
Make the gremolata: Mince the fennel fronds and toss them with the minced parsley and lemon zest. Garnish with chicken with the gremolata and serve immediately.
Serves 4
Discover more great recipes in Colleen’s Kitchen
Purchase the 2007 Goosecross Estate Chardonnay in our online store.
Aging the Wine “Sur Lie”
In this 2-minute video winemaker Geoff Gorsuch of Goosecross Cellars of the Napa Valley does a show and tell on why we age our Chardonnay “sur lie” and stir the lees weekly. Enjoy!
2007 Napa Valley Estate Chardonnay
September 8, 2009 by David
Filed under Chardonnay, Winemaker Notes
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Our signature style is a food-friendly Chardonnay that’s loaded with fruit, crisp and clean on the palate with a smooth, creamy texture. Bright and fragrant with the lively flavors of green apple, Asian pear, vanilla and pineapple, that lends to a lingering creamy finish.
Pairings: Shellfish, salmon, poultry, game birds and pasta sauced with cream or cheese.
How We Make Our Estate Chardonnay
Wine making is so simple, it was discovered by accident. Fresh grape juice, unattended, will become wine sooner or later. But here’s the hard part: will the wine be any good? Science helps us bottle wine that is much more predictably sound than it was 100 years ago, but we can’t make memorable wine in a lab.
The real fun and art of winemaking lies in the endless variables that come up along the way. Where and how to plant? When to harvest? How to handle the grapes at the winery? What kind of yeast to add? What kind of fermentation vessel should we use? Which barrels to buy? It goes on and on.
We’re going to focus on the choices that Geoff Gorsuch, our Winemaker, makes along the way to produce Goosecross Chardonnay every year.
Planting A Vineyard
Geoff will tell you that the wine can only be as good as the grapes that make it. There is no way to make a wonderful wine out of mediocre grapes, no matter how skilled the producer. Geoff’s goal is to get his hands on the best possible fruit and then to conserve the beauty of the fruit through attentive, but not intrusive, winemaking.
In our case, as a small, family winery, the winemaker is also the vineyard manager. Geoff is hands-on from the planting of the vines, every step of the way, until the wine is bottled.
You’ve heard the old real estate saw: “location, location, location.” Well, it truly applies in growing grapes for wine. Getting the right variety in the right location is 90% of the battle. We grow our Estate Chardonnay in the coolest region of Napa Valley, known as the Carneros Region. This is an ideal location for Chardonnay, where the grapes ripen slowly in the persistent morning fog, and cool evening breezes. The resulting prolonged “hangtime,” literally means that the Chardonnay has enough time on the vine to develop completely mature flavors and to delight us with a little tropical character. The soil is typical of Carneros, in that there is clay, but it is interspersed with some gravel and sand, improving drainage.
Before planting a vineyard like this, we bring in experts to take soil samples from various parts of the property, and also to measure the specific mesoclimate1 throughout the vineyard. With this information, we can make good decisions about selecting the optimal clone2 and root-stock hybrid3 for the site, and also set up the best spacing and row orientation for eventual wine quality.
For this site, we selected the low-vigor, SO4 rootstock in order to keep the yields down and flavors concentrated. A vertical trellis system4 in this location, running east-west, allows for plenty of light exposure to heighten fruitiness with very little risk of sunburn.
With these choices made, we lay out the posts, stakes and wires for the trellis. We dug the holes, planted and trained the vines and attached the trellis wires by hand. A drip irrigation system completes the installation.
From planting the rootstock or benchgrafts5, it is 3-4 years to the first small crop. We think of the vineyard as mature when it is 6 or 7 years old, and hope that it will be with us for decades.
2006 Napa Valley Estate Chardonnay
August 27, 2008 by David
Filed under Chardonnay, Winemaker Notes
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Geoff farms our Chardonnay in the breezy Carneros District where the cooling bay fog added to the effect of the long ripening season yielding small, intensely flavored clusters. Following harvest the first week of October, he fermented half the juice in oak for roundness and richness and the other half in stainless steel for vibrant fruit character. He brought the two together to create a fresh style of great complexity and vitality.
A bright perfume of green apple, sweet vanilla, pineapple and spice anticipates lively flavors of Asian pear, Meyer lemon and toasty oak. The creamy, lingering finish is the mark of several months of aging sur lies.
Chardonnay
June 19, 2007 by David
Filed under Winemaker Notes
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Fresh apple, pear and citrus–crisp with maybe some minerality? Or big, round, buttery and oaky? What goes on here? What is Chardonnay’s true identity? It seems to be all of the above. It’s quite a malleable variety that some say has little varietal distinction to call its own, yet it’s a beautiful showcase for terroir and also for the winemaker’s bag of tricks.
Join Nancy Hawks Miller, our Director of Education, for the first in a series of podcasts covering the major wine varietals.
2005 Napa Valley Estate Chardonnay
July 18, 2006 by David
Filed under Chardonnay, Winemaker Notes
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Abundantly fragrant with distinctive and intense fruit. Loaded with spicy pineapple, rich guava, creamy vanilla, and crisp citrus. The lingering signature finish is the mark of several months of aging sur lies. Our Chardonnay ripened slowly in the cool, Carneros fog, intensifying the fruit and lending it our signature crisp finish. Geoff fermented about 40% of the wine in barrels for fullness and complexity, and the balance at low temperatures in stainless steel for purity of fruit. By bringing the two together he created one wine that’s both opulent and lively. Bright and nicely focused.
Listen to our audio winemaker note: mp3
Read more about this wine here.
NVWR® 3 – Tasting Tips
November 1, 2005 by David
Filed under Napa Valley Wine Radio
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Tasting Tips featuring vintage 2004 Goosecross Chardonnay as the wine selected for this episode.
Text: Wine Tasting Basics
