Meyer Family Vineyards Chardonnay McLean Creek Road Vineyard 2019
Okanagan Falls, Okanagan Valley, British Columbia, CanadaHands down, this is one of Canada’s best-made chardonnays. Glinting pale gold in the glass, it’s aromatically gorgeous with honeysuckle, lemon curd, flint and toast—a hint of reduction, subtle oak spice and distinct mineral complexity mark this as something special. In the mouth, it’s tight and bracing, showing ripe apple, pear and peach, lemon verbena and a saline signature on the finish. With lip-smacking lemony acidity, creamy-mid palate swell, and graceful, adorning oak, this 2019 McLean edition vineyard impresses with both restraint and generous fruit. Notable body and intensity make this a fine dinner candidate. I recently tasted this blind in a competition setting, and my barely legible shorthand had words like ‘exciting,’ ‘energy,’ and ‘gorgeous nose.’ McLean Creek Road Vineyard is a superb, steep, rocky site in Okanagan Falls, planted in 1994. Steel fermented then slipped into fine French oak (only 22% new) to fatten up on the lees for nearly a year. Yes, Meyer’s Micro Cuvée from this vineyard is supremely head-turning, but this more affordable and accessible bottling has class and style to spare. Deserving of crab cakes, lemony roasted chicken, or aloo gobi.Tasted: 20 October 2021Tasted by: Prices:
Meyer Family Vineyards Chardonnay McLean Creek Road Vineyard 2019
Okanagan Falls, Okanagan Valley, British Columbia, CanadaMeyer winemaker Chris Carson has moved to the important second level of winemaking, where the wines are consistently well made from year to year. Dependability is perhaps the best accolade any winery can receive because it means they care about every bottle going out the door. In the McLean Creek label, the citrus, nutty, mineral, stony flavours are a constant, as is the fresh, long, linear palate flecked with hints of Okanagan scrub. Complexly simple, it is all you could want for the price. The winemaking regime is now familiar: chardonnay directly to press for a long, cool, gentle, pressing regime where only the purest, free run juice is retained. The ferment begins in stainless steel with indigenous and cultured yeasts, and it remains there for most of the fermentation before it is moved to under 20 percent new French oak. It sits on its lees for 11 months without bâttonage while undergoing a natural malolactic fermentation.Tasted: 01 May 2021Tasted by: Prices:
Meyer Family Vineyards Chardonnay McLean Creek Road Vineyard 2019
Okanagan Falls, Okanagan Valley, British Columbia, CanadaFrom their Okanagan Falls home estate vineyard and its steep sloping gravelled sandy loams, this was partial native fermented in stainless, before completing fermentation in French oak (22% new), where it remained for 11 months on lees, without bâttonage, and with full MLF. The wine was bottled unfined and unfiltered. There's a flicker of alluring flinty reduction on the front of this complexed, lemon-forward chardy, carrying yellow apple, green apple, river stones, verbena, and subtle cedar spice along the medium palate, amply bedded with herbal lees, and lingering with rock salt. Would love to see this dialled up and chiseled out even more, for the next level of chardonnay from McLean Creek.Tasted: 11 June 2021Tasted by: Prices:
quicksearch
