10 Bucks Good-Aldi’s William Walker Monterey Chardonnay 2024

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Hey, welcome. Domain Dave, cheapwinefiner.com. Stop by Aldi. Um, they have no more new wines. They used to have their um their fancy wines, um specially selected wines. Um, but they seem to be through those. Every get new one every so often, and everything else is kind of stale. But I saw grabbed one that's a new vintage, and we got the Aldi's um William Walker Monterey Chardonnay 2024. The label says it's uh winemaker's reserve, but since there is no winemaker's regular, how do we know it's a reserve anything? And it doesn't mean a thing on the label. So don't pay too much attention to that. It's from Monterey. Um, Aldi used to have William Wright Monterey, Chardonnays and Pinot's and all those wines from Monterey's. And typically speaking, Aldi will own the trademark, and then if they have to get rid of a um a producer, they can and they keep going with their wine. After building the wine up, they can they can still keep it. Here they changed the name from William Walker. Uh, there must have been some kind of difficulty with the trademark from William Wright to William Walker, and now Plato Wine Partners is making the wine, and they own like 20,000 acres of coastal vineyards in um in California. And they also, the winemaker Allison Crow uh makes wines for Kirkland. Uh, you see hers on a lot of uh California wines, so Allison Crow's wines are usually very well received. So this uh Plato Wine Partners is actually they do bulk wines and um and and uh brand wines, you know, uh store brands. But they're good. They they actually have been making, they have a they have a good track record. I'm gonna take a sip here. Nice, nice Chardonnay, 10 bucks. The alcohol's 14.5, a little high there. But um, you don't get the alcohol. Well, maybe on the very end of it you do a touch, but not really. And that after a few sips, that'll wear off. It is a bolder Chardonnay, it's got firm flavors. More melons, more anjou pear, you know, the pear that's kind of uh drier, not so juicy, you know, it's got nectarine spice. It's nice, it's a nice wine. It's actually has enough body that if you're cooking on the grill, uh, you got pork chops or you got uh chicken, um, and even a burger. I mean, it has enough of the good stuff that that you could, if you don't want a red wine, this will have this will stand up to a lot. I mean, I don't know if I'd want a steak with it, no, more or less, but um white, more white meat type of things would do well as long as you know, fancy um fancy salads. Every time I I do one of these wines, they start salivating, so I'm thinking of some really nice salads with pecans and cranberries and all that kind of stuff. But and and uh spicy Thai. This will put the uh fire out from Asian food, and it'll really go well, and plus it's got enough um acidity to cut the uh the fat that's in your mouth, you know, those things that cuts right through it and get your palate ready for the next sip. It's a nice wine. I'm gonna take another sip. Yeah, when I first tasted it, I it was open, it was a little like, hmm, that's it's a little bit too bold, but now it's kind of mellowed out to where the flavors are more um you know, more more balanced. I mean, I I was getting very strong melon above everything else, and that's kind of that's kind of just morphed into just another flavor along with all the others. Yeah, it's a nice tasting wine. It's uh put a good chill on it. It's $9.49 nowadays. When it was um this is the William Walker Monterey, when it was the William Wright Monterey, these wines were $6.99. And as I recall, I really like those wines. Especially the um, especially the Chardonnay. Maybe the uh the Pinot Noir, when you get down to $6.99, is sometimes a little tougher to make a really, really good one. But this Chardonnay's fine. And this Chardonnay's got malolactic fermentation, it's got some oak aging. You're getting uh a nice vanilla. It's not an oaky wine at all. You're not getting butter, but you do get a little bit of uh cream, a little bit of um vanilla, maybe a touch of honey, and you get the fruit, the more rounded fruit, not like um you know, not like uh a well-oaked wine that you're it it's a buttery thing. No, this is just a good sipping wine. Yeah, every every sip I take, the better it gets. Which is nice for a wine. And uh um now you don't want the wine the first step to be good and everything else to be torture. Now this one keeps it on going. So if you're um so if you're thinking about picking up a sub ten dollar Chardonnay for one of these uh storm in today, um, one of these summer days, this is not a bad wine at all. And it's at it's at Aldi. Um Aldi either has really, really good wines or kind of suspect wines, and this is one of the good ones. So there you go, keep it cheap adios. That's Domain Dave. We'll try to do some roses and maybe a little some suburb uh summertime sparkling wines coming up just to keep it in the everything in the right mood. So adios, keep it cheap. This was the Aldi's uh William Walker Monterey Chardonnay 2024. It's worth drinking, so keep it cheap. Adios, bye bye.