The Desert WIne Guy - 2010 Chateau Ste. Michelle Chardonnay - A Tainted Bottle Perhaps?

   Today's review will be on the 2010  Chateau Ste. Michelle from the Chateau Ste. Michelle vineyards (http://www.ste-michelle.com/) located in the Columbia Valley of Washington state. To begin with Chateau Ste. Michelle is the oldest winery in Washington State. The winery is located around 15 miles North of Seattle it is also very critically acclaimed. The winery was originally formed as the American Wine Company however in 1954 it merged with a company named The National Wine Company and The Pomerelle Wine Company. Chateau Ste. Michelle is approximately 90 acres consisting not only of vineyards of which there are 3,500 acres of them but also of large amounts of old trees since there use to be a lumber company there previously. The company now is producing over  2,000,000 cases a year. According to Wine & Spirits Magazine Chateau Ste. Michelle has been voted their "Winery of the Year" for the 19th time. Chateau Ste. Michelle is also the largest producer of Riesling in the world and happens to make one of my favorite Riesling. The Riesling they produce is not to sweet and not to dry and is packed with fruit flavor.
   O.k everyone here goes this review but first hold on to your seats.  You can call me crazy with what I am about to say but I am going to say it anyway. This wine took 2 hours to finally stabilize in it's taste. Yep, you heard it right, two hours. The wine, believe it or not kept fluctuating in taste. The Bouquet was of bright Peach with a hint of apricot and honeydew HOWEVER that would disappear while the glass was sitting for a few minutes. The taste of the wine itself also changed constantly. That sounds crazy doesn't it? I have never experienced that in a  wine. I actually almost gave up attempting to review this wine. I would taste the wine and and write some notes down pertaining to its characteristic but when I went to taste the wine again I tasted something completely different. I finally in the end came up with the idea of actually decanting a white wine which is NOT a very common thing to do. Well as it turns out the wine did finally settle down and I did get to review it which is why I decided to possibly decant next time. Please continue reading and find out just how this wine turned out.
   I actually had placed this wine in the fridge for about 20 minutes prior to drinking which those you who follow The desert Wine Guy know I don't normally do with my wines. The first pour of this 2010 Chateau Ste. Michelle  Chardonnay revealed a light to medium golden color wine. Upon the first sampling of the bouquet there was a very pleasant peach intermixed slightly with apricot & almost a honeydew. The bouquet was not overly sweet smelling but yet did stand out and promise you a very rich Chardonnay. The first taste of this Chardonnay had the taste of Peach come straight forward followed by Apricot and ending with honeydew also. I actually thought the wine was very pleasant...at first. That was until I tasted it again and I didn't recognize it. The wine actually changed it's taste while in the glass because when I tasted it again the peach was gone. The bouquet actually picked up a slight burnt smell to it also. The flavor as I already have said, changed. The Honeydew had left and was replaced by grapefruit while still retaining the apricot. The wine also picked up a strong alcohol taste. The peach in the bouquet also disappeared. When I would swirl the glass the peach and honeydew came back in the bouquet and taste but as soon as the wine sat for a short period of time the Peach and honeydew were gone again. I now had been trying for over 1 hour to actually see some stability in this wine but still at the 1 hour mark I had the same issues, I could not determine exactly what the real taste of the wine was. I actually wrote in my notes at the time the following "I give up. The wine is too inconsistent to review the flavor. DONE!!!!" I didn't feel like opening up another bottle of wine due to it being late in the day and close to dinner time so I figured I would drink the rest and never buy it again. After about 2 hours though I started to notice that the flavor finally stabilized and became consistent. The bouquet was Peach & a hint of Apricot and honeydew which was consistent all throughout the tasting however this time those flavors remained.  The wine itself became a Grapefruit forward wine ending in apricot AND that weird alcohol taste. The Peach taste was gone.
   Here is My final take on this 2010 Chateau Ste. Michelle Chardonnay. I don't think the wine is worth the trouble. The wine is constantly in flux and changes in taste for around 2 hours going back and forth between all the above flavors and has a hard time settling down. True the wine costs $10 dollars but that in today's day and age is no excuse. I do not want to pay $10 for a Chardonnay, or any other white wine for that matter and have to wait 2 hours before I know what it tastes like. That is too much trouble. I will in the future review another Chardonnay and report on it. I know I have some readers that are interested in Chardonnay and I am sorry but I cannot recommend this wine to you.
   After writing this article I decided to do some research. I read some reviews on this wine on line and discovered that people seem to love it. I am starting to believe that it might be possible that I got a bad bottle and after seeing those other reviews I have decided to revisit this wine again in the not to distant future. I will assume that the bottle was spoiled or contaminated somehow and therefore for the sake of fairness I will not be giving a recommendation on this wine today. I will re-review this wine soon and give my final verdict on it. Please check back.
   As I close this review I wish to remind you guys of one thing. As I have previously stated in one of my first articles in this blog. People have different tastes so what I recommend you look for in my opinion is a reviewer who has similar tastes to you. If you read a review from a reviewer on a wine and he likes that particular wine and you also happen to like that wine then you can be reasonably assured that your tastes on that type of wine are similar and you can possibly choose to go by that reviewers judgement. Then again maybe he matches your tastes in red wines only. The reviewers opinion might be way different than you when it comes to white wines and you might want to think twice about following his opinion on white wines. Basically wine is all about personal opinion. A great wine to me might be a bad wine to you. If you don't like a deep oakey red than you will probably disagree with my reviews on a red wine. If you like a very dry Riesling the same goes there. I hope you are understanding what I mean. I say this because it is very possible that when I re-review the Chateau Ste. Michelle Chardonnay I will come up with the same findings. Then again maybe I will discover that the wine I originally tasted was indeed tainted, we will see.

                                                                                                         The Desert Wine Guy