Golden in the glass. An unusual floral note in the stemware (heightened if all that’s clean is a Montrachet balloon as opposed to a Chablis glass. Oh, remind me to put the dishwasher through…). A deep and resonant bite with a pleasing long finish. The west coast chardonnay style done up and done right. In fact, I was stunned that chardonnay this good came from Washington and not further south. A good contrast would be the Ghost Pines we tasted a while back. It was as though GP was trying to achieve what L’Ecole hit with aplomb.
Oaky though. Oak forward. Shirley won’t pleez some of the wine cranks. But even for us a tad too much oak. And, unfortunately, an extremely unappealing 14.5% alcohol. Why, why, why so much alcohol? That’s a white wine bummer and while we loved this wine I am probably going to defer to other less alcoholic options in the future.
With food an interesting butterscotch, a sort of burnt caramel flavour came forward; delicious to the point of being decadent and a flavour not on the palate as a pre-dinner quaff.
Price: $24.99 USD retail in Washington on a recent US trip. In Vancouver, their semillon is $35 and their reds over $50 and based on the alcohol content I would pass even if it was on the shelf.
Market Liquidity: When you find a crap L’Ecole send me a text.
2 responses to “L’Ecole No 41 Chardonnay, 2010”
[…] In a one-two-three punch of west coast chardonnays this week (L’Ecole No 41, Cambria and CSM’s Ethos) this is the hands down […]
[…] varietals so exacting and exciting. [This blog is littered with L'Ecole plaudits: Merlot, Chardonnay, Semillon, Chenin; too bad we didn't do a handstand with this one.] It seemed to me an ideal […]