California Girl and I visited Luna so that we could taste the Chardonnay that is in their May release for wine club members. Luna’s Chardonnay show the versatility of the grape, with a variety of styles; some of which we have loved and others we have liked a lot less. We wanted to know where in that spectrum this Chardonnay would fall, so we could substitute it with other wines if we did not like it.
The Chardonnay was not to our taste. Now we needed to try a few other wines to find what we could put in the Chardonnay’s place. (California Girl Comments: Notice how it went from tasting the Chardonnay to needing to taste all the other new releases so we could make up our minds about what to replace it with?)
For the first time Luna had a Pinot Noir. The grapes were sourced not from Napa, but the Santa Rita Hills near Santa Barbara. The wine was a good example of Pinot Noir and reasonably priced. However, there is Pinot Noir that we prefer, so we did not select this one.
(California Girl Comments: I would like to say that the 2013 Sangiovese was a stunner; the nose alone had me wanting to buy bottles for myself. I do love their Sangiovese, but the 2013 year is really my favorite to date.)
The server then poured us a couple of red wines without showing us the label. He told us that they were single varietal wines and challenged us to name the grape and the vintage. I had no idea on the vintage in either case, but correctly identified the first as Merlot and the second as Sangiovese. The Merlot was added to the pickup. We also added a bottle of The Canto; Luna’s signature blend which is a Super Tuscan style that tastes good now and improves with age.
(California Girl Comments: The Brit did get the varietals on the grapes. He did better than I did in this case. Not that I am bitter or anything.)
The pickup is not ready for a couple of weeks, so we shall need to go back to collect our wine.
(California Girl Comments: What he really means is that it gives us an excuse to go back and taste more wines. It will start as going to pick up our wine at Luna, but then: “Oh look, we haven’t been to this winery and we are already here. Lets go try this one!” You are getting the picture here aren’t you?)
