This past weekend saw us enjoying the same food we enjoyed last week, which is our go to dinner when we have no guests, and I am lazy! Once again we went with our Lemon Rosemary Roasted Chicken with red pepper flakes, Brown Basmati Rice, and fresh green salad. This time my wine of choice was far more successful than my previous attempt of last week. This wine was a major hit and was perfectly paired with the roasted chicken. The bottle I opened is a new wine from our friends at the Harvey River Bridge Estate Winery from Australia, the winery that has brought us the Joseph River Estate label and now the a kosher wine from the Flagship Winery – the Harvey River Ridge Winery.

The new wine, the 2009 Geographe K Chardonnay, is imported by Allied Importers and it actually sells for less far less money here in the US, than it retails for in Australia! The price for the 2009 Harvey River Bridge Chardonnay (the non-kosher version of the Geographe K), is 15 Australian dollars. Given today’s conversion rate that comes out to: 14.82, factor in the insane shipping costs, from half way around the world, and the 13.99 that KosherWine.com is charging – seems like a steal! The new name, I guess, comes from the Geographe region that the Harvey River Bridge Estate Winery sources its grapes from. According to the Geographe Wine website, the Geographe wine region is: bounded by the curve of Geographe Bay, extending across a wide coastal plain and the rolling hills of the Darling Scarp, from Harvey south to Busselton and inland to Donnybrook and Collie, the Geographe Wine Region is fast developing into one of the country’s most exciting wine areas.

To me the wine was really enjoyable, tasty, and from my opinion, a slight bit oaky – though the winery’s page clearly states it is an “unwooded” wine. I sensed some wood on the nose, but maybe that was just me. PLEASE note, this was a nice wine, but it is NOT for cellaring – drink now or in the next 6 months – it will serve you well. Note as well, that this wine does remind me of many lovely unoaked (bare) Israeli Chardonnay from Ella Valley and Dalton.

The wine note follows below:

2009 Geographe K Chardonnay – Score: B++
The nose on this lemon to straw colored wine starts off very closed, however with time the nose explodes with grapefruit, bright lemon and citrus, peach, lychee, mango, pear, toasty notes, and spice/cloves. The mouth on this medium plus bodied wine is fruit forward and bright with pear, mango, grapefruit, lemon, and peach. The mid palate explodes with core acidity that is balanced by the wine’s weight, fruit, some nice orange rind, and spice. The finish is super long and extended with lovely bright citrus, grapefruit, mango, lemon, and spice. The mouth becomes spicier over time with a rounder, suppler, and softer mouth, but with a more expressive orange rind. All of this without any oak (according to the website), but I could not help but smell some on the nose, but hey that may just be me. Clearly NOT a wine that lived in an oak barrel, but one I could imagine had oak applied to it with sticks or bags to help fill out the mouth. Either way a wonderful wine that should be drunk now or within the next 6 months. This is not a wine for cellaring, but one that can be enjoyed with soft cheese, roasted fowl, and lemon or mushroom risotto.