Schramsberg Reserve Brut 2005
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The 2005 Reserve has aromas of wild raspberry, Bing cherry and caramelized orange that evolve with toasted hazelnut and creme brulee. The palate is layered with flavors of raspberry, guava, pineapple, cocoa and sweet spice. Crisp on entry, with a slight minerality, the texture is smooth and velvety. The wine has a balanced acidity and long finish that lingers on the palate.
Varietals: 74% Pinot Noir, 26% Chardonnay
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Very fine and complex, this is a great sparkling wine, but one that needs lots of time in the bottle. A classic brut blended with Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, it's rich with flavors of strawberries, limes, vanilla and honey, with lots of smokey toast and yeastiness. Above all, the mousse is exceptionally refined and pure.
Cellar Selection
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The rich, nearly tannic, frothy 2005 Reserve (74% Pinot Noir and 26% Chardonnay) offers notes of apple pie, honeysuckle and earth. Made in a bigger, firmer, more structured style compared to the J. Schram, it is pure with persistent bubbles, and should drink nicely for 5-8 years.
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Connoisseurs' Guide
Once again, Schramsberg has pushed sparkling wine to levels of depth and complexity that are rarely seen in these parts. The heavier reliance on Pinot Noir here as opposed to its Rosé mate above gives this wine more fullness and heft and also accentuates its complex approach to personality development. If, in the process, it has given away a tad more on the delicacy side, it gives away very little anywhere else and is quite highly recommended.
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Wine Spectator
A rich yet refined and focused style, with bold cinnamon, apple, raspberry and hazelnut aromas that open to opulent tropical fruit and spicy candied ginger flavors, finishing with crisp acidity
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In 1965, Jack and Jamie Davies founded Schramsberg and set out to make world-class sparkling wine in the true méthode traditionelle style on the property originally established in 1862 by German immigrant Jacob Schram. There were only 22 bonded wineries in Napa Valley and fewer than 100 acres of California vineyards planted to Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Schramsberg was the first California winery to provide a Blanc de Blancs in 1965 followed by a Blanc de Noirs in 1967. Now their son, Hugh Davies, leads the winery’s management and winemaking team.
The Schramsberg estate in Napa Valley’s famed Diamond Mountain District is a registered historic landmark with Napa’s first caves, hand-dug in the 1880s, and its first hillside vineyards. Quality focus drives all aspects of wine production starting with access to over 120 cool-climate sites in Carneros, Marin, Mendocino and Sonoma, which result in over 200 separate lots. Unique among California sparkling wine houses, Schramsberg ferments about 25 percent of its juice in oak barrels to produce rich, flavorful, complex wines.
Most of Schramsberg’s viticultural and winemaking practices are carried out by hand: grapes are hand harvested, the wines are handcrafted, and the bottles are stacked and riddled in underground caves. The family and the winery embody excellence and innovation in winemaking, as well as preservation of their land, their history and their community.
Representing the topmost expression of a Champagne house, a vintage Champagne is one made from the produce of a single, superior harvest year. Vintage Champagnes account for a mere 5% of total Champagne production and are produced about three times in a decade. Champagne is typically made as a blend of multiple years in order to preserve the house style; these will have non-vintage, or simply, NV on the label. The term, "vintage," as it applies to all wine, simply means a single harvest year.
Reaching up California's coastline and into its valleys north of San Francisco, the North Coast AVA includes six counties: Marin, Solano, Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino and Lake. While Napa and Sonoma enjoy most of the glory, the rest produce no shortage of quality wines in an intriguing and diverse range of styles.
Climbing up the state's rugged coastline, the chilly Marin County, just above the City and most of Sonoma County, as well as Mendocino County on the far north end of the North Coast successfully grow cool-climate varieties like Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and in some spots, Riesling. Inland Lake County, on the other hand, is considerably warmer, and Cabernet Sauvignon, Zinfandel and Sauvignon Blanc produce some impressive wines with affordable price tags.