2021 Walter Scott Chardonnay X-Novo Vineyard

Community Tasting Notes (14) Avg Score: 93.1 points

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  4/21/2024 - Bjweiss wrote: 94 Points

  Smoky matchstick reduction note here is awesome. Very Meursault like in character overall. While young, I think the wine showed very nicely, and personally, I like the electricity a young wine can bring, and this one delivered. Made some white burgs seem flabby and dull by comparison. This is a very serious wine, and I fully expect as the X Novo vines continue to mature and age, this
  wine will just get better and better with each vintage.

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  2/4/2024 - csimm wrote: 93 Points

  There's a lot of back and forth about the perceived reduction here, so I'll save the great debate for another time and simply say that this bottle indeed shows as such on the nose, but not in an off-putting way. With some swirling in the glass, the strongest aspects of it blows off for the most part, leaving a more flinty and higher pitched white and yellow citrus profile.
  
  Reminding me initially of a Louis Michel Les Clos (see my TN from 3/16/21 on the 2018 Les Clos - which you could pretty much cut/paste here), The 2021 Walter Scott X Novo shows its linear and juvenile side with its display of lemon pith, chalk, lemon juice, and subtle kaffir lime leaf. Finishes as it starts, with a straight-shot beam of acidity and chalky citrus juice.
  
  Sealed with DIAM 10, so there's time. Is it over-sulfured, you might ask? I mean, maybe, but to be fair I think trying this now is simply an exercise in fortune telling. Check back in 5 years and see what's up then. Otherwise, there is little depth and expansion of flavor at the moment. It's hyper clean on the fruit side once you get past the reduction, but there's currently not much layering. A nice quality bottle of Chardonnay, if not a totally convincing one in its current state. Thankfully, it's crafted in a more Burgundian style (which I prefer), rather than some of the vanillin oak chompers out there on the domestic front. 92-93+? points.

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  2/1/2024 - clavy daddy Likes this wine: 93 Points

  Needs time to open and or some of the oak to blow off. But after 1.5 hrs or so was singing.

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  12/30/2023 - AGELVIS Likes this wine: 92 Points

  Four hour slow ox. Light golden color. Lemon frosted angel food cake, rice pudding, and burnt popcorn dominate. Very dry palate, with good acidity. Nice overall structure.
  
  Decanting Queen was kind enough to bring this over, along with a number of other beauties (SQN, Pontet-Canet, Kinsman, etc.). Excellent OR Chard. I’ve now had a few with DQ over the years and I’m a believer.

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  12/29/2023 - Decanting Queen Likes this wine: 95 Points

  A Wine Fueled Goodbye to 2023; 12/29/2023-12/31/2023 (College Station, TX): Brought this as a ‘back-up’ bottle for my visit to College Station. I wasn’t sure about opening this so early and worried whether it might be too reductive for the rest of the group. As it turned out, the bottle broke in transit (carefully packed in a vingarde Valise case!) so we had to open it. Jaime managed to salvage without getting any glass in the bottle.
  I loved this wine. Some reductiveness on the nose but not offensively so (maybe it had a slow ox in transit 😂). A hint of florals and lemony fruits. On the palate it is delicate yet intense with citrus notes, rice pudding & slightly burnt buttered popcorn (you can tell who I am drinking with!) and mineral. Glad we ended up trying this. I am starting to realize that these WS chards are so versatile. Drinking nicely now but a few years in the cellar leads to a nice evolution. The freshness of these early bottles makes them worth trying young.

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