Diatom Delish

It's our 40th wedding anniversary this summer and we have booked a table at Pluvio restaurant in Ucluelet.
I was looking over the wine list and saw 2020 Diatom Chardonnay from Santa Barbara, a name I was not familiar with.
A Greg Brewer wine.
The 2022 is stocked at Everything Wine so we gave it a go.
Nice, light gold colour and a shy nose at first with understated citrus fruits on the palate.
Really good fruit /acid balance and it opens up with air to show a promise of some complexity.

A relative bargain at $50.00.

[David M. Bueker]

$50 on the wine list? That is a good deal if it’s an objectively nice wine.

It's $50.00 CDN at our local emporium, Everything Wine.
Here, in Vancouver, that's a pretty good price for the quality.
The restaurant has it listed at $105.00.

[Jenise]

Not that long ago an very elderly WIWP (Wacky Internet Wine Personality) and Bordeaux fanatic, Sir Richard (yeah, a legit baronet), who lived in the Santa Barbara area went on and on about Diatom chardonnay. His wife mostly drank white and this was their favorite. He himself was a devotee of Domaine du Chevalier rouge. What made him wacky is that he logged in almost daily to boast about these wines and aggressively challenging all who disagreed with his proclamations to IQ tests. At least half of his posts came from a medical facility where he was being rehabbed after a fall/head injury. His issues seemed to be part medication and part just being off his rocker. Anyway, his fights resulted in him getting kicked off Wine Beserkers and the Wine Spectator sites before coming here and trying to burn us down, too. After we locked him out he went to the Cellar Tracker board where he got in a lot of trouble, but passed away before they had to throw him out.

I had not heard of Diatom before all that but, of course, I couldn't resist trying one when I saw it locally. This was maybe four years ago? Anyway, I only paid around $15 for it. I'm very surprised to see the prices you're mentioning. I'm going to go look this up....

[Jenise]

The vintage I had was '21, and I had it twice. Seems to be an outlier vintage because my tasting notes on the one we had note that multiple CT reviews compared it to Chablis. Bob and I found it confected with movie popcorn flavors, and when it showed up in an all-chardonnay tasting awhile later my notes say it was the only wine out of 15 or 20 no one liked at all.

I also saw that another venerable former member of this group, years earlier and of a much younger vintage, held it up as an example to someone else about how wines like it would change the other persons mind about west coast chardonnays. A NYT review said virtually the same thing.

Clearly I need to try another vintage of this.

The bottle we had was understated and even a bit reductive, with the last sip being the best one as it had started to open up.
No apparent oak influence and it hid the14.5% alcohol pretty well.

[Jenise]

We obviously had an oddball vintage. I'll try it again next time I see it for sale--but I won't pay $50 for it.