Not too crazy this week. We stayed home for a quiet shabbos, so we made some yummy chicken along with a very cool Asian chicken soup recipe.  The cool thing about the soup is the crunchy texture of water chestnuts that melds well with the torn chicken and pineapples. Very cool stuff.  I also like the simplicity of the recipe.

Anyway, chose a Chardonnay from the cellar that I thought would work nicely with the chicken flavor and the pineapple flavors of the soup and the spicy accents in our chicken recipe for the main course. I chose the 2005 Golan Heights Winery Chardonnay Yarden Odem Organic Vineyard. as described below, it was great for a bit and then it morphed into something I did not like as much – a shame. Still the food was nice!

2005 Golan Heights Winery Chardonnay Yarden Odem Organic Vineyard – Score: A-
This was a nice wine. It has almost no nose. It started with a strong and aggressive fruit nose – but it blew off very quickly, and all that was left was the wood and butter aromas. The nose initially had aromas of peaches, citrus, asparagus, and strong notes of sweet wood and crazy butter – almost overpoweringly so. As stated the fruit in the nose disappeared quickly. The mouth on this medium – full bodied wine also lost its fruit quickly. It had lovely flavors of citrus and sweet apples that somehow broke through the fog of dense wood and butter flavors. The finish lingered long on the palate with strong flavors of asparagus wrapped in a butter and wood blanket. Even after the fruit blew off, it still was a nice and complex wine that was constantly plays off its butter, wood, and vegetal qualities. It is a thick and almost velvety wine. Would be a smashing success if the fruits would have stayed around longer.