Ever wondered how a buttery Chardonnay gets its creamy, smooth character? This episode promises to transport you into the world of Aldi’s Intermingled California Chardonnay 2020, a fantastic budget-friendly find at just $6.99. We dive deep into the story behind the label, highlighting the winery of record – Sutter Home – a brand under the Trinchiro family of estates, known for their vast portfolio of top-notch wines. You’ll learn how this affordable white wine lives up to its buttery claim, through processes like oak toasting, malolactic fermentation, and lees stirring.
As we sip and savor the wine, I’ll share my tasting notes, revealing an impressive balance of melon, lemon curd, green apple, dried pineapple, and a hint of nectarine. Listen in as I discuss how the wine’s character evolves as it warms up, becoming more balanced and unveiling more flavors. A lover of buttery Chardonnays or just on the hunt for a reasonably-priced daily wine? This episode is just for you. And stay tuned for a special segment where I’ll be sharing my upcoming Costco wine haul! Let’s raise a glass to the joy of wine-tasting!
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Welcome. It's a domain day from cheap wine fightercom, another companion podcast for a wine We wrote up on the cheap wine fightercom website. It's a cheap. It's from Aldi 6 99. Aldi's wine selection has been kind of stagnant for a couple of months now And this is one that's been there but I kind of missed. It's the intermingled California shard in a 2020. Actually, on the label It says buttery California shard name. So there you go with 6 99. If I didn't say that already And it's a chip the California wine colo That's the people who do the labels, and the winery of record is Souter home on that. And Souter home is owned by. It's a brand owned by a Trinchiro family of states who have been around for like 70 years or something And they do manaja, twi and fully do and Charles and Charles and Joe got. They have about 45 different wine brands that you've heard of. Plus they have their own wines and so they're legit. Souter home was like 130 year old winery that went out of business during prohibition and then they brought it back and now it's like an inexpensive wine and we're drinking inexpensive Aldi Chardonnay, so it works. You know the Trinchiro has it while it was made and at Souter homes winery. They have probably five or six different facilities to make different wines and the actual wine they said is intermingled wine brand, which is not a real thing. So I'm going to take a sip and we're going to talk about it, because it's a buttery Chardonnay and it's only 6.99 and it is. It's got butter. I mean, there's some. So how does it get? well, talk about how does butter get into wine, because it's not there naturally. So if you have some kind of a toasted oak aging of some sort, and at 16, and I don't know how they, how they got it in, there's different ways. It could be oak barrels, but there's other ways and I don't know what it is. So we'll just leave it at that. And if you toast the oak and the right species, the right cut of the oak, it will impart vanilla and chocolate, and vanilla is like one of the building blocks of that. And then you also do malalactic fermentation, which changes the tart natural acid in grapes, especially Chardonnay grapes, into lactic acid, lactose milk. So you get that vanilla and that milky thing going and now you got the the building blocks of butter. And then you can also stir the leaves. The leaves are, when they leave the dead spent yeast in with the wine during aging and the more you stir it, the creamier it gets. So you can get. You know you're getting all these butter things, cream and milky and vanilla kind of going on. So that's where the butter comes from and which ones they use here, i don't know, but it actually is. You know how low can you go. That it is kind of um, it's kind of a real, it's not over the top butter, it's real. There, if you like your, you like a little bit of that flavor in your Chardonnay. This is about as cheap as you can get to get real, a real buttery Chardonnay. It tastes pretty good, you know, and it's, it's decently balanced. Just another sip and it's. As it goes on it opens up more and becomes even more balanced. It's just creamy and smooth and it's got melon and lemon curd and green apple and dried pineapple and maybe nectarine, a little bit of, a little bit of creaminess, a little bit of spice, maybe a little bit of lime. Yeah, it's got decent flavors. My third sip um, i chilled it first. They're figuring a inexpensive white wine should be chilled, but it's tasting better now that's warm up. So you know, a lot of times, you see, chill the wine. It doesn't always do that and you chill the wine to also mask some of the flavors, and I think sometimes inexpensive wines need all the help they get. They don't need any other flavors masked. So, um, if someone tells you to chill it and you don't feel like it, don't do it. I mean, if you're into chilled wine, you feel like they're excited and see people chilling red wine, and fine if you like it, but it seems like, uh, red, uh room temperature will do it for most people. So what we have here is the Intermingo California Chardonnay 2020. Um, buttery california, and it actually is. And it's actually about as low as you can go and still get the decent buttery chardonnay. I know it's buttery, isn't always the most popular chardonnay in the world, but it actually does a decent job of it. And you want an inexpensive daily driver. This will do it and you know, because you know over the top butters not where I'm at, but, but this doesn't have it. So that's it for me. Uh, domain day from cheap wine fighter dot com. Keep it cheap. Uh, stay safe, stay cool, and we'll have more wines. Uh, i'm heading off to Costco so we'll get some of their wines, and we'll talk about those a couple days. So adios, bye, bye.
