Alex: What's Up with Dalton Chardonnay?

Re: Alex: What's Up with Dalton Chardonnay?

Tue, 06/16/2009 - 2:54pm | Report Abuse

Hi Scott,

the chardonnay suffers from two problems. The first is that much of chardonnay in the north of Israel suffers from a virus, meaning that over the years yields and quality have been falling. Low yields have meant less production and less wine to go around. The second issue was that the 2008 vintage was Shmitta in Israel (the sabbatical year for agriculture).

My importer along with some others refused to import wines from the 2008 vintage, out of sensitivity to his religious clientele, which meant that the US market was limited to a quantity of wine from the 2007 vintage which needed to be set aside to serve the market for two years. Naturally in order to make the wine last it had to be severely rationed. Hence the shortage of Chardonnay in the US.

So, what does the future hold? Well, in the past year we have discovered the root cause of the virus and there are protocols we can use to mitigate its effects, but they only work on young vineyards. So all our existing vineyards are more ore less lost.

This year we are planting new chardonnay vineyards in areas which, so far, have not been affected by the virus and they will come on line in another four years. We will judge the quality of the new vineyards once they come on line. But I suspect that we will see the resurrection of the unoaked chardonnay label in the estate series sometime in the next few years.

Meanwhile I am sorry to say, that there wont too much Chardonnay from Dalton over the coming four years. BTW this is one of the main reasons that we began developing viognier as an alternative premium white to chardonnay. If you haven't tried it, the 2007 is very good.

best,

Alex

Re: Alex: What's Up with Dalton Chardonnay?

Wed, 06/17/2009 - 5:49am | Report Abuse

Well, it takes us more in the direction of Rhone Valley varietals and wine styles which many people believe are better suited to the Israeli climate.