"When Should I Drink This Wine?" - Club Releases

Earlier this month, I posted a blog about the difficulty of recommending when wines should be drunk. Wine that are meant to be consumed in the short term don't offer the same difficulties. Most the wines we produce for our Collector's Circle and Future Release Program clubs are meant to have a relatively short drinking window; these wines are significantly more fruit-forward than our Cabernets and are particularly good when paired with food.


To find out recommendations on drinking times and to see which varieties (and in which percentages) make up our club blends, we have just updated our Drinkability charts. You can find the Collector's Circle wines here and the Future Release program wines here.

2004 Merrillie - Paired with Asparagus and Yellow Squash and Pesto Pasta

I'm not really good at pairing wine with food...I'll leave that to the experts. After a pre-dinner Negroni (necessitated by too little Hendrick's for a full martini) and putting a pasta sauce together with onions, garlic, yellow squash, asparagus, and pesto...red wine wasn't going to do the trick.

In my cellar, I found one bottle of 2004 Merrillie (unfiltered) and it seemed like a potential match. I've always felt that our Chardonnay was better with significant bottle age. The 2004 proved me right. Just a beautiful wine...wonderful fresh lemon and pear notes, gorgeous underlay of leesy, nutty qualities from the sur lie aging and malolactic fermentation adding layers of complexity; finishing acidity that has rounded out with bottle age but which still girds the wine's substantial fruit and creates length and a mouthwatering finish.