Wines That Are Just WRONG for My Palate: A Trip Gone Bad to an Esteemed Winery in the Russian River Valley of Sonoma

I know you may think I thrive off panning wines or wineries, but really I don't. Who wants to drink crap when you can have deliciousness? Not I.

So to continue the Wine Country Chronicles (which have only a few entries left, sadly, since I'm reliving that great experience through the blog), I bring up a rather thorny subject of a winery whose wines I just didn't dig.

At the recommendation of a few friends and blog readers, MC Ice and I took our sweet rental car (with no power steering -- it apparently died while we were driving it) and trekked through the pouring rain to a beautiful property in the Russian River Valley of Sonoma.

Lynmar Estate is in a gorgeous setting -- very naturalistic with great landscaping and a terrific outdoor area that overlooks their estate vineyards. It is a perfect set-up for enjoying a pretty Sonoma day and the family, who owns the property, has clearly taken care with the design and hospitality of the place -- it was cozy yet elegant.

When we spoke to the tasting room dude, he told us that Lynmar and Fritz (a winery I love and will review soon) were separately owned by brothers. If you've been following the series on Napa/Sonoma, you won't be shocked by the Lynmar story -- it's rich-guy-loves-wine-buys-winery...same as virtually everyone else in California wine country. In Lynmar's case, the dude sold a logistics company to UPS and in 1990 founded Lynmar, making wine in other facilities until establishing a tasting room and winery on property in 2005.

Before I get into the wines, a tangent on Sonoma. Sonoma is much harder to get to know than Napa. For starters, it's much larger and the climate, soil types, and terrain vary drastically from area to area. The upside to this is that you get to taste so many different styles of wine and a lot of different grapes too. The downside -- it can take forever to really put your finger on which areas of Sonoma you like and which you don't.

Probably the most branded area of Sonoma is the Russian River Valley. This region, which started out as a settling spot for Russian Immigrants who lived on the coast (hence the name), was settled in the early 1800s. There was some small time grape growing in the 1840s, which gained speed through 1919 when the Federal Government decided to give Organized Crime a reason for being and enacted Prohibition. Most wineries went out of business and it wasn't until the 1960s, when a dude at University of California who was in charge of viticulture (Source: http://www.rrvw.org/our-history/) posited that Chardonnay and Pinot Noir may grow well in this former Russian playground.

Today 41% of the grapes in Russian River are Chardonnay and 29% Pinot Noir. The rest is kind of a hodgepodge with Zinfandel (9%), Cabernet Sauvignon (5%), and Merlot (4%) rounding out the top 5. Bottom line -- if you go to the Russian River Valley, expect to taste a lot of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. And expect to taste a lot of it that is exactly like Lynmar's versions, which you'll either like, or, if you're me, really not like so much.

Why? For my palate, I'm not a fan of Chardonnay that tastes like the inside of a toasted oak barrel with a stick of butter spread on it for good measure. I prefer Chardonnay that is less about the winemaker showing me what he or she's got and more about the expression of the grape (at times enhanced by a some light barrel flavors). It's a delicate balance when it comes to Chardonnay, and I find that in general (and this is not true for all) Russian River Chardonnay is oaky, creamy, buttery, smoky, and overdone.

The same is true for the oh-so-delicate Pinot Noir grape, which consistently tastes to me like a smoked berry fruit roll-up when from this region. In general, I find that the the complexity, the purity of the fruit, and the way that they can be highlighted by a gentle use of the right kind of barrel to give them flavor, is not achieved in the Russian River Valley by many producers. Is it true for everyone? No, I've already said I love Woodenhead and Siduri Russian River Pinot, so there are exceptions. But for my palate (which judging from the sales of Russian River wine, is not the same palate of most US wine drinkers), it doesn't work.

Before I get any further into reviewing the wines, I want to create a distinction. There are wines that suck and are poorly made (most jug wine for instance), and there are wines that are well made whose style I just don't like for any number of reasons. The latter point is relevant to Lynmar. So I'm going to review the 6 wines we tasted. I'm going to try to keep it neutral and I'm going to omit the Drink or Down the Sink portion because you can assume (there is one exception) that I would choose to drink many other things before drinking these wines, however I wouldn't chuck them either. They're just not my deal. Ok....

The Wine: La Sereinite Chardonnay
Where It's From: Russian River Valley, Sonoma County, California
The Grapes: 100% Chardonnay
Vintage: 2008
Price: $70

Color: With a very pale straw hue and a slight green tinge, I expected the wine to be acidic, bright, and not at all oaky (oak aging can darken a wine's color so this looked unoaked and young).

Smell: A very lively nose of lemon, lime, and tart apple. It was a little buttery, but for the most part kind of neutral smelling.

Taste: For me this was the best tasting wine of the day. It tasted like lemon and tart apple, and was creamy but not overly so. It was a nice light wine. The winemaker aged it in neutral oak, which means there was no detectable oaky character to the wine. La Sereinte was also put through a secondary fermentation (malolactic for you dorks) to make it creamy but not cloying. This was a nice example of what Chardonnay from the Russian River would taste like if winemakers showed restraint. _______________________________________________________

The Wine: Russian River Valley Chardonnay
Where It's From: Russian River Valley, Sonoma County, California
The Grapes: 100% Chardonnay
Vintage: 2007
Price: $30

Color: Full signs of oak aging in effect here -- the wine was a yellow-gold with gloppy legs, showing it's 14.3% alcohol right on the glass as it dripped down ever-so-slowly.

Smell: Pear and lemon were first but then a very buttery, toasty smell -- like a cream-filled pastry or french toast -- overpowered my nose. The wine smelled like popcorn too -- something I notice a lot in California Chardonnays and wish they would leave at the movies. There was a cinnamon latte note as well (also from oak), which I found rather random.

Taste: At first the pear and lemon shone through, but then there was a strong burnt caramel character with singed toast from a toaster. The wine was tart and acidic on the finish and the alcohol burn was reminiscent of my college days when slamming down shots of Popov Vodka and Goldschlager seemed like a fine idea. Ouch -- my poor esophagus.

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The Wine: Quail Hill Estate Chardonnay
Where It's From: Russian River Valley, Sonoma County, California
The Grapes: 100% Chardonnay
Vintage: 2008
Price: $40

Color: Ok, so now we're back to the pale straw color -- the wine was nearly transparent. Given that the first wine was a similar hue and pretty good, I had hope that this wouldn't be an oak bomb...

Smell: The nose was not telling me much. It was kind of chemically-smelling, with orange, lemon, and lime notes but the wine was not generous with the aromas. I didn't get much of anything off the nose. Again, I thought this could be a good sign -- I didn't smell a popsicle stick or a 2 by 4, so this could be another winner.

Taste: And here's the oak...smoke, toasted bread, cream-filled croissant -- all right there on the tongue. With that said, it was a very textural wine and less a flavorful one, meaning there was nary a fruit flavor to be found. The wine was extremely creamy -- almost unctuous but not in a pleasant way because there was also a good dose of acid to pierce the creaminess. Perhaps with a few years of aging this wine will mellow and the textures and flavors will meld, but as it is now it seemed really disjointed and as if it came from something other than fruit.
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The Wine: Russian River Valley Pinot Noir
Where It's From: Russian River Valley, Sonoma County, California
The Grapes: 100% Pinot Noir
Vintage: 2007
Price: $30

Color: A light ruby color made me think that maybe this was a lighter style, fruity Pinot instead of one that is over-ripe or blended with Syrah to darken the color. Fingers crossed.

Smell: The standard Pinot fruit smells of strawberry (stewed and dried in this case) and cherry were overwhelmed by an artificial smell that was almost chemical-like in nature. This is something I have smelled in other Russian River Pinot Noir. I don't know if it's the nature of the soil, the barrels used, or what the Pinot is picking up from the environment but either way, it's something to which I am VERY sensitive and it rules the glass for my nose.

Taste: The wine tasted like it smelled -- it was a complete fruit bomb but with an overlay of chemical, paint-like tastes. This Pinot tasted so processed to me -- so stylized and like the smells of a fermentation tank, that it was hard to get beyond it and find anything else to enjoy. _______________________________________________________

The Wine: Quail Hill Estate Pinot Noir
Where It's From: Russian River Valley, Sonoma County, California
The Grapes: 100% Pinot Noir
Vintage: 2007
Price: $60

Color: Despite what the tasting notes describe (they say it's intense in color), I thought this wine was also the right color for Pinot Noir -- not very dark, but pretty, ruby, and light in color.

Smell: And there it was again. The sour cherry fruit notes overlaid by a chemical smell, although this time there was a distinct salty sea note behind the fruit. Whether it be from the vineyard (this could have been a marine area at one point and still has those characteristics in the soil) or the barrels impart a wooden smell that registers in my mind as salt, it doesn't matter to me. Sour cherries and salt were tough.

Taste: The wine tasted slightly better than the smell -- like dried raspberries and strawberries with a little of unripe, tart black cherry. That salt character I smelled was integrated with the intense smoke from the oak (they must have charred these barrels well). These strong smells were a lot to take and choked out the bright fruit. _______________________________________________________

The Wine: Jenkins Vineyard Pinot Noir
Where It's From: Russian River Valley, Sonoma County, California
The Grapes: 100% Pinot Noir
Vintage: 2008
Price: $70

Before I get into detail on this wine, I want to say that we TRIED so hard to leave before we tasted this. Although the Chardonnays were passable, the Pinots were so the opposite of what I like in a Pinot that I just knew this wasn't going to be for me. I know this is one of their showpiece wines, so forgive me for the blatant honesty on this one.

Color: This was a dark, high alcohol wine. It looked like a Zinfandel from Paso Robles in the glass. What does that mean? Dark crimson in color (indicates to me that the grapes used were overripe) and viscous like blood (the legs took about half an hour to come down the glass because the alcohol was unbelievably high).

Smell: MC Ice (who is taking the picture above not pictured in it, FYI : ) and I actually had this funny moment while trying this wine. We both were tasting and looking at each other and trying to figure out why each of us disliked it so very much. Was it the alcohol smell that practically burnt off the tips of our noses? Was it the oyster shell/sea salt smell that was even more prominent than in the last wine? Or was it the very odd general beach-like nature of the wine that was so out of place for Pinot Noir (Burgundy, it's home, never imparts these characteristics) that is was almost fishy? On the positive, beaches have wildflowers from time to time and there was a note of that.

Taste: It was with heavy heart that put this in my mouth. The wine tasted less like salt and more like an over-done Pinot -- bursting overripe raspberry and cherry flavors were juiced up with a ton of smoky oak and nutmeg. The wine's texture was seriously astringent and it was heavy and had a hot alcohol burn from that 15.1% level they achieved from baking their grapes in the sun. This was like an elixir of sea salt and Port mixed together. Not for me.
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After my brief post on Lynmar while I was in Sonoma, I received a nice note from them. They are lovely and I should note that many critics and friends like their wines. You may like their wines too. I really just didn't dig them -- especially not their Pinot. I'd try them again, but with so much other stuff out there for me to drink, it may be a while before I get to it....

As always, if you know this winery, let me know what you think...