Alright here goes, a bit of background on this wine. Mrs CWG and I had this on our recent trip to Australia. We picked up at a local Sydney bottle shop and went to have a Vietnamese dinner. I did NOT enjoy this then, really it was a tad plonkish and really lacking anything special. “So why CWG are you about to review this” you ask? Well with an odd work day I asked the better half to grab something new from the small vintages section at the Market Street LCBO, all I said was get something interesting between $15 and $25, surprise me. Well either there was something in the name of the wine that intrigued her (cough) or she was in the mood for a Chardonnay. Lo and behold here we are talking about a wine we already failed on the diametric opposite side of the Earth, oh joy! Let’s give this the proper clean slate and move forward, shall we? Pooles Rock Wines (note their website appears to be down) is the producer of this Chardonnay that hails from the Hunter Valley region in New South Wales Australia. Unlike most of the Aussie wine regions that dot the southern portion of the country, the Hunter Valley is north of Sydney on the East Coast. Worth the drive up or down if you are in Brisbane. So with all that said how did it do on attempt number two? Read on for the tasting review!
So we poured our glasses and we came up with different aromas. Mrs CWG blurted out peach while I hovered on green apple and honeydew. So it could be fair to say it had fruit on the nose (as one would expect for an unoaked Chardonnay). As we got more into the wine the words “rough” “acidic” came up. But as we began to get into dinner (we had chicken fajitas) the wine complimented well enough and actually softened enough so that we got more out of it. Buttery and flowery with a hint of pineapple seemed to be prevalent. Overall the wine did do better on this side of the globe but not enough for me to change my mind on it. Overall I’d not recommend this to anyone unless you wanted a good comparison of unoaked Chardonnays. For the price I can recommend at least 3 to 4 Niagara based Chardonnays that are priced similar or cheaper that will outdo this one. Do not be fooled by the clever name and label. Here is the LCBO link for reference.
I think to be fair to my palate and others this gets an 81 out of 100.
Mrs CWG says
Sorry for the selection, I should have returned it!
2006 Cockfighter's Ghost Unoaked Chardonnay
