Two Different Sonoma Tastings
Sonoma-Cutrer and Acorn
A few weeks ago when we were up in Sonoma we met some
friends for two completely different but both good tastings. The first one was at Sonoma-Cutrer, known
mainly for Chardonnay, and the second was a winery called Acorn which is just a
couple miles up the road but worlds away.
Sonoma-Cutrer was not our first stop where Chardonnay was
poured this weekend but for some reason we really enjoyed many of the Chard’s we
tasted on this trip. Perhaps we were just in such good wine tasting moods or
perhaps because wineries are starting to make more accessible Chardonnay. I think that Sonoma-Cutrer has a pretty good
pulse on the wine trends when it comes to Chardonnay, as their Chard’s are one
of the top selling restaurant wines year in and year out. People coming to Sonoma-Cutrer are usually
coming here because of their solid reputation with this wine.
The property at Sonoma-Cutrer is stunning. It is a pretty classy joint. The winery building is striking and the lawns
below the winery are equally impressive.
While other wineries have bocce courts, Sonoma-Cutrer has massive
croquet courts with stone terraced levels above the courts for viewing. It is really something we had not seen
before. Everything is big here and it is
obvious that they are very successful and sell a lot of wine. The winery is owned by Brown-Forman (Jack
Daniels/Southern Comfort) but there are really no signs of this and I even
needed to do a little research to find this out. Certainly here it is about wine and nothing
else. Sonoma-Cutrer was established in
1973 as a vineyard company and produced their first vintage in 1981.
We had made a 12 o’clock appointment and our table had
already been set for us. They are an appointment
only winery and with a sit down tasting, this makes sense. There were four glasses set for each of the
five of us. The standard tasting
includes three Chardonnay’s and a Pinot.
There was actually a 4th Chard that is only sold to wine club
members that we were able to taste also.
The Tasting Fee is $10.00 which is pretty fair for a sit down
tasting.
The First Chardonnay we had was the Russian River Ranches
Chardonnay; this is the number one restaurant Chardonnay in the country and I
think that it is because it is very drinkable and reasonably priced at $24.00
retail. This is a blend of the many
vineyards in the RR area Sonoma-Cutrer sources from and is pretty nice to
drink, regardless if you are a Chard fan or not a Chard fan. This wine receives less barrel time than the
other wines and is released sooner. I
would buy this wine if we were expecting guests that only drank Chardonnay. The second wine we tasted was labeled ‘The
Cutrer’. This wine received 95%
Malolactic Fermentation (the first receives 70%) and was our least
favorite. The third wine was called ‘Les
Pierces’ and with the least amount of Malo at 50% was our favorite. So if you are one looking for that most
buttery taste you might turn around how I favored them. Still we were pretty impressed with the group. The second and third Chard’s were $35.00 and
$36.00. Our last wine was the Pinot and
of course our favorite. We are Russian
River Pinot fans and liked it but did not love it. It retails for $34.00 which is probably a
pretty reasonable price.
Our next stop was Acorn.
Betsy and Bill Nachbaur purchased the Alegria Vineyard in 1990. The
vineyards were planted as far back as the late 1800’s, mainly with
Zinfandel. Today there is some of the
original Zin as well as Syrah, Cab Franc, Sangiovese, Alicante Bouschet and
Dolcetto. We tasted all of them plus a
blend named ‘Medley’.
I used the word ‘Different’ in the blog title because
this was quite a different tasting experience than that at Sonoma-Cutrer. There is no Jack Daniels money behind Acorn
and I’m guessing Sonoma-Cutrer pours out more wine than Acorn produces in a
year. But a different tasting experience
is not bad. Acorn is reached by driving
down a one lane road that passes by a couple of houses and arrives at a metal
storage/barn-like structure. We sat
around and tasted at an old kitchen table and were hosted by the owner
Betsy. We received a little lesson about
the property (the estate property has some pretty good history), how they make
wine, their philosophy and so on, then we proceeded with the tasting.
Sometimes when you taste seven red wines back to back,
and especially when you do not take great notes, the recollection is a bit
thin. I think our two favorites in the
group were the Sangiovese and the Cabernet Franc. All the wines are priced around $30-32.00
with the exception of the Alicante Bouschet which they made just two barrels of
and was priced at $45.00. Bill Nachbaur
makes the wines with assistance from Clay Mauritson (Mauritson Estate Wines of
Healdsburg) and all the wines come from grapes grown right at the estate.
The tasting fee is $10.00 but comped with purchase and
reservations are required. The tasting
room really could not accommodate a group much bigger than eight or so. This may not be the kind winery experience you
would take someone from out of state with only time for two or three winery stops
but for those of us that make a habit of visiting tasting rooms it really is
pretty cool to sit with the owner who has really experienced the wine business
first hand.
What we liked- Two back to back but very different tastings
What we bought- Nothing at Sonoma-Cutrer and a bottle of
Cab Franc at Acorn
Vitals-
Sonoma-Cutrer
4401 Slusser Road
Windsor, CA 95492
(707) 237-3489
Acorn Winery
12040 Old Redwood Highway
Healdsburg, CA
95448
(707) 433-6440
