Charles Woodson's Intercept Chardonnay 2018
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Wine
Enthusiast -
Wilfred
Wong
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Bright straw-gold in color, medium-bodied with notes of apple, peach and baking spices. Rich from barrel fermentation and sur lie aging, this wine has a long toasty oak finish with balancing acidity.
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Wine Enthusiast
Tight aromas of lime blossom, Key lime sorbet, white melon and a touch of spearmint show on the nose of this bottling by football star Charles Woodson. The palate starts with stony flavors before tropical touches of guava and lychee arise.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2018 Charles Woodson's Intercept Chardonnay over-delivers. TASTING NOTES: This wine sports aromas and flavors of peach skin and savory spices. Serve it with a rotisserie chicken and a salad of baby spinach and kale. (Tasted: April 13, 2020, San Francisco, CA)
Other Vintages
2020-
Wine
Spectator
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Wilfred
Wong
One of the most popular and versatile white wine grapes, Chardonnay offers a wide range of flavors and styles depending on where it is grown and how it is made. While it tends to flourish in most environments, Chardonnay from its Burgundian homeland produces some of the most remarkable and longest lived examples. California produces both oaky, buttery styles and leaner, European-inspired wines. Somm Secret—The Burgundian subregion of Chablis, while typically using older oak barrels, produces a bright style similar to the unoaked style. Anyone who doesn't like oaky Chardonnay would likely enjoy Chablis.
Paso Robles has made a name for itself as a source of supple, powerful, fruit-driven Central Coast wines. But with eleven smaller sub-AVAs, there is actually quite a bit of diversity to be found in this inland portion of California’s Central Coast.
Just east over the Santa Lucia Mountains from the chilly Pacific Ocean, lie the coolest in the region: Adelaida, Templeton Gap and (Paso Robles) Willow Creek Districts, as well as York Mountain AVA and Santa Margarita Ranch. These all experience more ocean fog, wind and precipitation compared to the rest of the Paso sub-appellations. The San Miguel, (Paso Robles) Estrella, (Paso Robles) Geneso, (Paso Robles) Highlands, El Pomar and Creston Districts, along with San Juan Creek, are the hotter, more western appellations of the greater Paso Robles AVA.
This is mostly red wine country, with Cabernet Sauvignon and Zinfandel standing out as the star performers. Other popular varieties include Merlot, Petite Sirah, Petit Verdot, Syrah, Grenache and Rhône blends, both red and white. There is a fairly uniform tendency here towards wines that are unapologetically bold and opulently fruit-driven, albeit with a surprising amount of acidity thanks to the region’s chilly nighttime temperatures.