WTN, sort of: Swan Angelo's Old Vine White '99

It was my birthday today, a prime year <g>, and I like cracked crab and Caesar salad, so that's what I had for dinner.

I opened my second to last bottle of Angelo's Old Vine '99 to go with. Good choice.

'99 was the last vintage of this wine. 54 cases produced.

How beautiful! Lamenting. This bottle has quite a bit of lemon in it. Angelo's OV is so smooth and insidious that you find it's gone before you have a chance to do all the clerkish stuff. It's pale gold, just darker than straw. Light in the nose, with a little dustiness that comes between the nose and the initial taste in the mouth. The dustiness is sort of like (but not at all really like) muscat. After that -- Chard? Viognier? Arneis? Bits of them. Lots of meat, like Chardonnay.

Interesting. Was this a sort of "Kitchen Sink" bottling for grapes that didn't make it into other wines. Or some other sort of rationale?

was that the Angelo's white was from the Frati vnyd. There was some mixed whites in that old vnyd that were being pulled. Stuff like SauvignonVert, Palomino, other junk grapes that were the norm to plant by the old mustache-Petes back in those days. But it was not a kitchen-sink blend of whites that didn't make the cut. Rod made the wine intentionally to see what they'd do. Nothing profound, but good drinking at a good price.
Tom

It was the Angelo's Old Vine from Angelo Frati's vineyard. Rod has said that Angelo Frati bought the grapes sometime in the 1920s and didn't remember, or perhaps never knew, the variety. I was under the impression from Rod's discussion (it was several years ago) that the vines were all pretty much the same.

The small section, near the creek, was replanted with Chardonnay.

The wine seems to improve quite a lot with age, and to hold very well. This bottle tastes much the same as the first '99 I opened, in 2002. And at $12.50, the price was certainly right!

Stuff like SauvignonVert, Palomino, other junk grapes that were the norm to plant by the old mustache-Petes back in those days. But it was not a kitchen-sink blend of whites that didn't make the cut.

Interesting. Thanks

[Jenise]

I always loved this little field blend; it tasted like no other and as you say, John, it aged well. Tom says it's nothing profound, but actually I always thought it was fairly much so for a $10ish California white wine.