Elaine, the owner of Elaine Wines is our guest today on California Wine Country with Dan Berger and Daedalus Howell. She started her winery after a career as an biotech intellectual property attorney. Dan Berger discovered these wines just by tasting them at an event. He was excited to find a Chardonnay that was not overdone and that smelled and tasted like Chardonnay. It is an older style of making Chardonnay that appeals to people like Dan who remember when that style was prevalent. Elaine Wines is a small winery but has already earned a bunch of awards.

This first one for tasting is the 2023 Chardonnay, the youngest one that Elaine brought. All of the Chardonnays are made with fruit from her vineyard. She has three acres with one acre of Chard and two of Pinot Noir. Dan detects a little bit of dried pineapple character and the oak is very subtle. The vineyard is at high elevation and Dan says the wine matches the smell of the vineyard. There are fir trees and oaks nearby which influence the vineyard. Dan also appreciates the good acidity. The vines are 25 feet from their house.

Before Elaine moved to California, she was a biotech patent attorney, with a background in molecular and micro-biology. She got an online certificate in winemaking from UC Davis, before she moved from North Carolina. Elaine found a custom crush where she was not obligated to meet a tonnage minimum, which allowed her to start making wine with a small production. She found a community of helpful people in California, who work in wine. That is uniform throughout most wine regions in the world, says Dan Berger.

Dan says that Prohibition may have ended in 1933 but it was the 1960s before winemaking woke up in the US, in California mostly.
Chardonnays
The second Chardonnay they taste came from the same grapes, but the first had newer barrels and the 2022 was made in one single barrel that had been used once before. That is generally considered 50% new. She only made 23 cases of this, because they had a very low yield and she had promised some grapes to another winemaker. This wine won a Double Gold at the San Francisco Chronicle wine tasting. Dan says that the problem with a lot of Chardonnay today is that it has to be big and rich. This is the other side of the spectrum of types of Chard.

A lot of people making Chardonnay are trying to make a wine that they think will sell. Elaine, on the other hand, came into this without that notion at all. She just lets the vineyard do what it can do, and then handle it in a way to bring that out. Don’t serve it too cold, because the flavors won’t come out. What’s more, this wine is a 2022 and it has had enough time to reach full maturity. She likes to do "as little as I can" and treat it gently.
Pinot Noir
The next tasting is a Pinot Noir that earned 99 points and a Double Gold from the American Fine Wine Competition, and Gold Medals all over the place. Dan says that the judges like it when the dominant flavor is fruit not oak. Dan describes the flavor of beets that is hiding in the wine.