2005

Chardonnay

Goats Do Roam Wine Company - Goat Door

Paarl - South Africa

Price: $10.99

Rating: 3 – At This Price It’s A Toss Up

Goats Door, a Chardonnay from South Africa, was deeper yellow than most Chardonnays.  It also had a touch of lime green.  This would suggest a fruit forward chardonnay, but it was not.  Since it was barrel aged the deep melon and tree fruit flavors so typical of steel aged Chardonnay were missing.  With those elements not present, one would then expect the creamy, nutty, oak flavors of barrel aging to come out.  They didn’t seem to materialize either.  This made it an easy wine to drink, but a non-distinctive one. 

A good Chardonnay is not often easy to pair with food because of either the fruit or the dryness of most Chardonnays.  But because of the indistinctive qualities of this wine, it actually made food pairing quite easy.  But in the end, there was none of the panache, none of the ripeness, none of the distinctive flavors and aromas that commonly come with a good Chardonnay.  Frankly we’d give this wine a 2.  But because Chardonnays can be very expensive, when factoring in the $10.99 price, we raised the level to a 3: A toss up (so our recommendation: Flip the coin, or buy something else).