Glen Ellen Chardonnay

[Botafogo]

I remember it well......

I was the Beverage Director at world famous Antoine's in New Orleans during the WSWA (Wholesale Wine & Spirits Association) show of 1984. Old man Benziger caused quite a stir with this wine which was

A) from the 1983 vintage, being shown in March of 1984 and was labeled "Proprietor's Reserve", something normally reserved for much older wines at that time.

B) not quite dry with at least as much residual sugar as, say, Charles Krug Chenin Blanc or some popular German table wines of the era

and C) REALLY cheap!

This pissed off a LOT of other producers who did not see at the time that it was, in fact, the pipe in the Pied Piper's mouth just waiting to lead the masses to them (although I have always suspected a young Jess Jackson must have been taking copious notes).

I was in the dining room serving Tom Burgess of Burgess Cellars when this came up as a topic of discussion and Tom was about ready to have a stroke, going on and on about "he can make any damn thing he want's to but they shouldn't let him call it 'Chardonnay', it's too damn sweet!" I asked him if the broad range of then popular late harvest Zinfandels should be banned from being labeled as Zin and he started sputtering about "that's different!".

Shades of the current debates re using the name Barolo for wines that don't taste anything like Barolo....but in the case of Glen Ellen it was not a place name but a varietal name so I had no problem with that.

Roberto