Chalk Hill Estate
Our second stop on the Chalk Hill adventure ended up being Chalk Hill Estate. They had a tasting option that was all wines only available at the winery. In researching the area we read a lot of negative reviews about the experience here but we’re happy to say we had a good experience. Didn’t get many pictures and didn’t take any wine home.
We will definitely pass this way again so we can take some of this wine home.
Aaaaaand we did! We went back to Chalk Hill in September. It was very early in the month and driving in we saw that a lot of their grapes had already been harvested. Must be something about this micro climate because we hadn’t seen quite that level of harvest anywhere else on this trip.
We tasted a rose that was juicy, light, a very pretty wine.
That was followed with a 2014 Viognier. Typical of Viognier, this was light with caramel and tropical fruit in the nose.
We tasted a 2014 Chardonnay Musque Oaky nose, BIG nose! Caramel finish. Light easy fruit, butter.
The prize here for me was the 2014 Syrah. We don’t often drink Syrah and it has to have something that grabs our attention. This one definitely did! Big fruit and a szechuan pepper finish, I wanted to save this one for a Prime Rib pairing. We had some friends over and voila! It was delicious.
It went downhill from there for a while. We tasted a Malbec that had the characteristics of unripe persimmon. I wrote down big fruit but undrinkable.
That was followed by a 2013 Claras. this one had big fruit on the tongue. The nose was reminiscent of the bowl of plastic fruit on grandma’s table.
Then the Zin. Being partial to Zin we enjoyed this one. I got leather and sweat socks on the nose with a nice big, juicy fruit in the mouth.
We have had two good experiences here so if you read the bad reviews on Yelp, just ignore them and give it a try.
https://www.chalkhill.com/
Tasting Room Hours: 10 am – 5pm daily
707-657-4837