WTN: Those were the days, my friend

[Jenise]

My brother served this wine last night. Took me back in a fun way to my long ago single lady days in Newport Beach when I was considered the wine snob in my crowd for being willing to spend an extra $1 for Sebastiani and Mondavi wines instead of just buying the cheapest thing on the shelf.

2023 Sebastiani Vineyards & Winery Chardonnay Heritage Series Sacramento Dry Creek Vineyard
Can find no retail information about this wine, price or otherwise, not even on the Sebastiani site. And its owner did not remember where he bought it, but since he does not tend to purchase wines over $10 we can assume it was cheap. As such, it offers outstanding QPR: restrained fruit, sophisticated body/mouthfeel, clean and nicely dry for California. Would pass undetected in a group of $30-40 chardonnays and be better than many. But hey: Sacramento has its own Dry Creek Vineyard--who knew!

[David M. Bueker]

Every once in a while those old stalwarts turn out a great value. I don't recall the exact vintage, but perhaps it was 2013 where Louis Martini put out a Sonoma Cab that was absolutely gangbusters good for like $17.

[Jenise]

I remember that one!

I'd have never looked twice at this one myself. Glad Chris doesn't have my bias. And it's strange that a wine so new, 2023, from something called a Heritage Series isn't listed on the Sebastiani website, though CT had an entry for this and several others from the same series (but not the same AVA). Probably from Grocery Outlet and I hope they still have some, even I would snap up a case (if I were still buying wine, that is.)

[Jenise]

Got to the bottom of this. $6.99 at Grocery Outlet. Sebastiani had some big plan to create this new brand and then abandoned it, and the wines went to close-out retailers like GO, the way movies used to go straight to video (or now streaming) when some hiccup in distribution takes theatrical release off the table. The way the economy's going, we're going to see a lot more of this.

[David M. Bueker]

No doubt, I had wondered if maybe a custom label for a big chain, but that makes more sense.