2015 Chardonnay – I Had No Idea
Stuhlmuller Vineyard
Alexander Valley, Sonoma County
When I arrive at the winery I have no idea what I’m about to get. I asked Leo about the 2014 Chardonnay, he said…”nope, none, it’s all gone, too late.” I had missed it. There was a little reserve Chardonnay kicking around the cellar…I asked about that too…I asked Fritz, “….nope…none.” It was a quick answer that led to no Chardonnay in 2014…nope… none… as it goes when one is curating… sometimes the museum closes early… sometimes the strange guy on the street corner actually knows that the museum is not open on Mondays…nope… none…come back tomorrow.
So I did…one year later.
The 2015 Chardonnay from Stuhlmuller marks the third release of Kitten Swish Chardonnay… only the third…I had no idea that up until now there would be only three…or should there be four?… five?… ten!!.. or any for that matter… it just happened this way. Not to say there would have been more, or less… who knows…this is really just how things worked out.
I had no idea.
The 2015 growing season was one of ease with plump yields and healthy grapes. Chardonnay harvest started in mid-August, finishing mid-September. The wines were fermented with natural yeasts in stainless and aged in a mix of old and new French barrels. Our lot came from a single cask, cask #3 (a 1500 liter barrel a few years old). The Chardonnay clone is Robert Young 17 and the vines came from the block by the guest house, just above the tree where the tire swing is. The wine was bright from cask, glimmering really, powerful with a certain leanness, at least for Alexander Valley. The wine curated itself really. It came to me, fully complete…sometimes things just become things…I had no idea I would love it this much, so quickly, so easily. Nothing more
required…nope…none.
The label this year is the anthropomorphic illustration of your brain having no idea. Staring out, looking for something…waiting for something to arrive.
There is bliss to no ideas…nope…none…the shallows of nothing…hillsides of nope…valleys of none…the drought of absence. Sometimes you have to start with no ideas …an open space, free and clear, that lets a herd of ideas graze upon the grassy delitescent folds of your brain. I had no idea I would have no 2014 and I had no idea I would have such a beautiful 2015. I had no idea.
I had no idea
I would
love it
this much
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