Wines inspired by the jazz music they love.
Some Chardonnays can age for decades, and some die after a year. At Fat Cat Cellars, the vibe is velvety varietal wines. I would say thats a good testimony I decided on three wines, a fine Chardonnay, a sweet wine (Fat Cat) and a Cabernet Franc. (Truly: At $5,000 for a bottle of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Montrachet, you'd worry about counterfeits, too.) Chardonnay can be as golden as a wedding ring, or so light as to be almost colorless ripe with a tropical fruit salad of pineapple, mango, and guava flavors, or lean and taut and lemony-tart. It lives in boxes on the bottom shelf of the supermarket, just as it lives at rarefied tastings where the bottles are smashed after the event, to prevent people from filling them with counterfeit wine. It grows on the exalted slope of Burgundy's Côte d'Or, where at harvest each bunch is cosseted and carefully clipped by hand it grows in the flatlands of California's Central Valley, where it's harvested by diesel-fueled agricultural machines. Fat Calf Brasserie, led by Chef Anthony Felan, features French-inspired southern cuisine in an casual, upscale neighborhood restaurant in Shreveport, LA. It's able to express itself as an oaky, buttery wave of lusciousness just as easily as it can a steely, linear zap of freshness. As the years have gone by, it's become clear to me that Chardonnay is, more than any other grape, a chameleon.
