L’ Ecole No 41 2008 Columbia Valley “Walla Voila” Chenin Blanc
Just made it back from an awesome trip up to Washington State where we saw family, attended a beautiful wedding and made it a mission drink up some WA wines. I picked up a box of some value wines thanks to a big sale at Huckleberry’s. They are due to arrive in Bay Area any day. But in the meantime, i’ll cover what I tried while on our trip (you don’t take vacations with a kid) to the Pacific Northwest.
While my dad’s true passion is Scotch, he has a modest collection of wines mostly from our home state. Knowing my interest, he asked me to pick out some bottles that I would want to try. The L’ Ecole label is one that had always stood out in my mind. I couldn’t tell if I should take it seriously, with the crayon drawings and Comic Sans font. But I stood there looking over the wines, exhausted from a state wide drive and I said, what better time than now.
I picked the Chenin Blanc because it seemed like a happy medium from a desire to start drinking summer wines, while the reality was mild humidity, overcast skies and ca need for a hoodie as the evening fell.
Sadly, this wine was kinda lousy. It was more sweet then I had anticipated, heavy tropic fruits (pineapple from a can), a lot of acid and heat going down. Rather than looking forward to the next sip, all i could think was “what the hell is going on with this” and “Tums”. We all powered through the bottle, quietly eating our turkey sandwiches and watching Die Hard 2 around the TV.
Oh well, on a positive, while looking up info for this post I came across WAwineman’s Muses on Wine. Super great blog, and it gave me the courage to pan a wine for the first time.
Yippie Ki-Yay MF’ers!
