Winemaker Notes
The 2010 Reserve exhibits lively aromas of baked pear, apricot and candied orange that gain complexity with touches of Christmas spice, honey and crème caramel. Flavors of baked peach, roasted pineapple and mango are layered with toasted hazelnut, leading to a rich and powerful finish with fresh and clean acidity.
Schramsberg Reserve is well-suited with a main course, such as fruit-stuffed veal, pork tenderloin, roasted duck with mango, cedar-plank grilled salmon, and curried chicken salad. This flavorful sparkling wine can also be served as an apéritif with smoked oysters, caviar and such hard cheeses as aged Swiss Sbrinz, Sonoma Vella Jack, or Irish Coolea.
Blend: 84% Pinot Noir, 16% Chardonnay
Professional Ratings
-
Wine Enthusiast
This is an extraordinary wine, both mouthfilling in texture and intricate in flavor. A light amber color leads to a profusion of subtle spice and apricot aromas backed by enticing ginger, raspberry and citrus nuances on the palate. The flavors grow richer and deeper with each sip, carried by a very fine bead of effervescence and subtle acidity.
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2010 Reserve is made up of 84% Pinot Noir and 16% Chardonnay. It has a creamy nose with scents of meringue, ground coffee, oyster shell, poached apples and nuances of bread dough, marmalade and mushroom. The palate is lovely, with a wonderfully balanced blend of freshness and savoriness, energy and silkiness, with soft, very finely beaded mousse and a long, nuanced finish.
-
Wine Spectator
Polished, rich and full-bodied, featuring expressive cherry and apple flavors, laced with brioche and spice notes, building to a plush texture on the long finish. Drink now.
-
James Suckling
Lots of dried fruit with caramel and cream. Apricots. Full-bodied sparkling wine. Dense and rich palate. A big and fruity wine. 84% chardonnay and 16% pinot noir. Drink now.
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.