The Reserve Chardonel
Something you might come across if you work at a winery for about a year is that you swiftly find out that you cannot actually have your favorite wine be every wine in the winery, it can be really hard to talk about the wine with visitors if they don’t believe you have any discernment whatsoever when it comes to the wine you most commonly imbibe. The compromise I have come up with is to think about my “Best in Class” wines, helping to filter out the good into my top-notch favorite in specific types of wine.
The Stone Hill Reserve Chardonel has the honor (mayhap dubious) of being my favorite white wine in the winery. I have always enjoyed buttery Chardonnay to some extent, but the Reserve Chardonel brings something to the table that makes it far more interesting than any Chardonnay I have tried. We started using the Chardonel grape due to its hybrid strength, being a cross between the Chardonnay grape and the Seyval blanc which allows it to weather (pun intended) the seasonal extremes that Missouri is known for.
The Chardonel we make, both our Reserve and our regular Chardonel are aged “on the lees”, or sur lie method. Lees are the yeast cells and other sediment that are left after fermentation is complete, and they can contribute many sensory attributes if left in the aging wine. During the aging process on the lees, we use a special paddle put through the bung on the barrel to stir the lees back into the wine to impart all the wonderfully complex flavors, those very same flavors that I enjoy so much.
Grandma’s Impressions
Grandma has a strange relationship with the Chardonel grape as she was much more familiar with the Seyval blanc grape, one of the parents of the Chardonel. With this in mind, her palate will always identify the elements that are more “Seyval” first, and at first smell and taste she will always ask if we are drinking a Seyval.
Part of this has to do with her keen interest in Vidal and Seyval, her having a slight preference for Vidal but a long history with Seyval. Several of the wineries that she worked with in the past had large plots of Seyval, unfortunately for all the Seyval enjoyers in this area (and there is a surprising amount of folks that seem to miss it) the grape does not grow very well in Missouri. It grows better than Chardonnay or any of the more finicky Vitis vinifera varietals but compared to Chardonel, it is hardly a competition.
Once her initial recognition of Seyval fades, she swiftly identifies the grape as definitively NOT a Seyval and instead starts exploring the faint butteriness that she finds on the nose, noting the similar citrus notes one might find in the Seyval but exploring the clear differences that the Chardonel brings to the table.
Her first taste has her eyes widening, the smooth buttery notes creating a sensation she describes as almost “creamy”, in the sense that she very much enjoys the rich mouthfeel of the wine. She loves the brighter notes of pear and remarks at the vibrant touch of lemon she picks up. She makes comparisons to her love of Vidal Blanc, drawing the glass of Reserve Chardonel closer to her with a glare whenever I suggest she may want a glass of that instead, remarking instead that where her love of Stone Hill Vidal Blanc is for its brightness, its mineral and fresh fruit taste; her love for Reserve Chardonel is an enjoyment of its savory, buttery notes as well as the richness of the wine in her mouth.
These days that last is high praise from her, as the slow but sure loss of her palate has been an ongoing struggle for her. It is what makes her enjoyment of these wines all that much more important as she gets the opportunity to reclaim a touch of something she has been losing.
My Impressions
The nose is one of my most favorite in the winery; it is rich with crumbly biscuit and butter notes. It smells somewhat like the top crust of fresh baked biscuit right as your break it with your fingers, after which there are very clean scents of ripe fruit, pear with a touch of grapefruit. The Reserve Chardonel always smells incredibly fresh, a savory and refreshing nose that brightens my evening with the anticipation of a wine that I am about to thoroughly enjoy.
The first sip is rich, the mouthfeel silky and body incredibly full. The initial flavor is a lovely lemon rind note that moves slowly into a light pear adjacent flavor before rounding off into this absolutely delicious, savory buttery finish that lingers as one of the more delightful end states that our catalog offers. A fun exercise is to drink the Reserve and the non-reserve Chardonels and explore what differences you can find between them, I will reserve a deeper explanation for the “Chardonel: A Novice Guide to Wine” but I will say that to my taste the non-reserve Chardonel is much brighter and grapefruit oriented in flavor profile, it is a treat to taste them next to each other and really dive into what a difference that the different ways you can make wine, even with the same exact grape.
Final Thoughts
I cannot speak to all the reasons why my favorites are my favorites, often I find myself at a loss for the words to describe my experience. Reserve Chardonel is fortunately not one of those as this was one of the first wines that I really pushed myself to explore, to name the aromas and try to really conceptualize what my tongue was experiencing in a way that I had not tried previously. While Cream Sherry is very much still my favorite overall wine that we carry here at Stone Hill Winery, you could say that Reserve Chardonel is the real start of what I would consider my journey with wine.
You can shop Reserve Chardonel, and the rest of our wines Here.
Michael Haggerty is the Shipping Coordinator at Stone Hill Winery and handles all DTC wine shipments.
You can reach him for shipping inquiries via email at shipping@stonehillwinery.com or by phone at 573-486-2221.