2018 Walter Scott Chardonnay La Combe Verte- USA, Oregon, Willamette Valley (5/28/2020)
Poured into a Grassl Cru glass and followed over the course of the late afternoon/evening.
A puff of white smoke initially on the nose that blows off, giving way to lemon oil, fresh cut wheat, underripe pineapple, and apple blossom aromas. On the palate the wine has zippy acidity with lemon/lime citrus notes and grapefruit peel, balanced with a mix of chalk and crushed stone minerality, along with a touch of vanilla bean on the back end. The wine really sings on the mid-palate, as the flavors just grab on and carry their way to a persistent finish of lemon peel, underripe tropical fruit, and wheat.
This is a nice introduction to the Walter Scott lineup. Purchased this along with the 2018 X Novo and Seven Springs chardonnays, really looking forward to trying out their higher end bottlings. (91 pts.)
Sounds pretty close to what I remember. I love that like Goodfellow that they use all long Diam closures. I have yet to have a bad wine closed under Diam. I really find I love to let both these and Goodfellow chardonnays warm up quite a bit to really bring out the flavors. It also tends to flesh out the oak. What’s bizarre to me is WS uses ~50% new french oak on all their chards but even in blind lineup they don’t stick out say compared to a Richards Cuvee or a PYCM.
Do you know if the Diam closure that Walter Scott and Goodfellow use are consistent across their respective lineups? I believe Marcus uses Diam 10 for all his wines, but didn’t pay attention to which one Ken and Erica use for the Walter Scott bottlings. Didn’t realize they use that much new French oak, it’s definitely not that obvious.
So the 2018 Cuvee Anne was under Diam 10. The 2015 Richards was under Diam 5. The 2018 WR Blanc is now under Diam 10 Long. I believe the heritage wines are under Diam 30… Seems like Marcus upgraded his corks. I thought the crack and WV wines used to be under Diam 3. Diam 10 long is a serious closure.
When I first started using Diam with bottling the 2013 Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs in 2015, I experimented quite a bit with the different density options Diam offered.
I used the Diam 10 in the single vineyards, and the 30 in the Heritage #2. The 30 was not a correct choice for a leaner vintage and our use of stems(which is why the first wide release of the #2 was in the Berserker Quarantine this year). It was beyond bottle shock for about 3 years. I also felt that while I liked the Diam 10 for the vineyard designates, they also were in bottle shock for about 6 months instead of 6 weeks. That was challenging from a sales standpoint.
I switched the vineyard designates, and Richard’s to Diam 5s and the Heritage to the 10s. That lasted 3 years and now everything except the Willamette Valley Cuvees and AVA bottlings are the Diam 10 in 49mm.
The Whistling Ridge Blanc has been the Diam 10 since the 2014 vintage(bottled in 2015).
Experiments with the Diam 3 showed it allowed our wines to be available earlier, but I disliked the rapid evolution of the wines, and that low density has been culled from our process.
if reading correctly, the wrong level of oxygen via diam in reds creates bottle shock in the form of reduction? That’s what i’ve read as some of the complaints about diam for reds
Reduction isn’t really an issue in our red wines. Our process for red wines is pretty oxidative, so reduction wasn’t what we dealt with. Our wines gain weight, fruit and texture in the bottle. When the O2 transfer rate is too slow, our wines stay very lean and almost wan/faded for too long. That was the issue with the Heritage #2, which has come around but needed several years for that.
But if a winery had wines that were reductive and bottled with the higher level Diams(lower O2 transfer), them that reduction would be more likely to become complexed(and less likely to evolve out). But using a higher rate of O2 transfer Diam would also shorten the life span of the fruit. Tannin polymerization move at different rates, and if the fruit in a wine oxidizes faster than polymerization can occur, you could have a wine that would miss the peak possible expression of the wine.
Now that the 2013 #2 is emerging, do you feel that using the higher Diam corks had any long-term influence or merely delayed its development? And where do you think screw caps fit into rate of O2 transfer?
my next case purchase from Walter Scott needs to have at least 6 bottles of other Chardonnays, so I don’t have JUST ‘my favorite’ (X-Novo) and get to taste more of the variety in the vineyards
