The Costco Wine Chronicles: JaM Cellars Butter Chardonnay Review

Welcome to Maine Dave and cheap wine fightercom with another wine review podcast for a wine we wrote up on the cheap wine findercom website. This one's kind of fun and interesting. I found it at Costco for 9.99. Checked online and selling for $13, maybe to $17 and it's available everywhere, but it's cheaper at Costco. And what it is? the Jam Sellers Butter Chardonnay 2021. There are two Jam Sellers Chardonnays, one's Napa and one's California. This is the California one. They don't say where it's from, but Jam is located and they have a winery It looks like you should visit. It's music, everything. It looks like a pretty cool place. So if you're ever going to Napa, put Jam on your list. And this was made, or at least sellered and bottled, in Lodi, so they have a few facilities all over. Jam is actually John and Michelle, a true shard. John is second generation wine maker and his father has true shard vineyards, which is now established in Napa and he broke off and his is now John Anthony of Family of Wines. The Jam is one of his several brands And it's Butter Chardonnay. Because they actually kind of celebrate oak. You know oak influence in wine and they don't really go into a lot of details. I was hoping I'd hear about all about a malactic fermentation and you know batonage and everything, but they didn't really do that. They just said they did cold fermentation and they did a very specific blend of different oaks, and how the oak is cut can change it. They always toast the wine, the inside the barrels, and you can do different levels of toast light toast, dark toast. I mean that brings out the oak flavors and the toast and you can do a collection of very light and do that to get all the different flavors in the right one. It's not easy but you can do it and they did it. Now I'm going to take a sip. And for butter, it's not like the old school there's still a few out there that still do it old schools where it's just the wood is so strong in it and the butter overtakes all the flavors. That's not what's going on here. This is a unique take on Chardonnay. I mean I always tell people I don't like Chardonnay. Well, you don't. Everybody makes Chardonnay a little bit different. I mean there's a thousand different variations you can do to it, from the grapes to the production techniques to the oak aging. No oak aging, they're all different. This one's really different and at ten bucks. It's a lot of fun too. It's got like some vanilla cream going on. It's got lemon curd and maybe apple and some peach, maybe a little bit of honey. It's got stone fruit, maybe dried apricots. It's got maybe a little bit of a very, very light butterscotch and then maybe a little bit of tropical, just a little. There's a lot of flavor going on. The butter isn't necessarily butter I mean they have wines that are called toast and they do the whole jamping up But there's a lot of flavor going on and it's 14.8 on the alcohol. 14.8 is well within red wine territory. You don't see that many white wines going that far. So this is a wine that's got some body to it, but the body kind of helps it support all the flavor. And it does have tons of flavor. I'm not a huge fan of overly-oaked chardonnay. I don't really like un-oaked chardonnay. It tends to be a little bit brittle and spiky for me. I really like to round chardonnay off and this has that and plus a kind of unique flavors going on and it does taste good. It might not be everybody's cup of tea, but it is a wine you probably should try because it is unique and it's well done. Everything is balanced. I'm going to take another sip The chardonnay that doesn't have the yolk bounced out and the flavors right where they're supposed to be. This is kind of a sleek wine, even though it's big and bold and still sleek. That's a good trick And the chardonnay doesn't get in the way. But I just caught myself licking my lips a little bit, which means it's there, it just covered up by all the fruit flavors and it tastes good. I mean, 14-8 isn't a wine you're going to want to have and have to get up at 7 in the morning. You might want to have this Friday night, saturday night, where you can sleep in a little bit, because it is a heavier wine and that is a consideration. It's always a consideration, but I liked it. Jam Sellers Butter Chardonnay 2021. I didn't think I would. The website is all these people, models and photographs having fun. They don't really tell you much about the wine And one thing I noticed is all the people who are being photographed having fun are doing things that no one who ever has fun would ever do. For some reason, that's how marketers think fun is. But that's beside the point, because the wine is really good and they should have let them drink a couple of bottles before they started photographing, there might have been better fun pictures. So that's it for me. Domain Day from cheapwinefightercom. I guess we like your podcast. The JAM Sellers Butter Chardonnay 2021 from California is a win for me. It's a wine that you should try. I mean, it might not be your style, but then again you might not know exactly what your style is, and it might be afterwards. So there you go. So keep it cheap, stay cool and safe, and I'll be talking to everybody. I think I've got a Costco Bargain Rioja Reserva. It's going to be an interesting one too in a couple of days. So I'll talk to everybody in a little bit. Adios, thanks.