I’ve written a few times about Brotherhood Winery in Washingtonville, NY up in the Hudson River Valley. It is one of the region’s larger producers and makes a wide array of wines-from honey wine to spiced holiday wine to riesling to a ruby ‘port’.
They don’t have any vineyard holdings of their own, so they source grapes from throughout New York State-primarily the Finger Lakes and Long Island.
The grapes that went into this 2004 chardonnay were grown on Long Island’s East End, but no further details are available. There’s a lot of chardonnay grown here, so it certainly isn’t a surprise that some of it is leaving the island.
Of winemaker Baeza’s current releases, this $13 chardonnay is the best. It’s nicely balanced with vanilla, honey, pineapple and butter-roasted apple on the nose. Unfortunately, those many layers don’t carry over to the palate, which is fairly one dimensional.
The balance is nice though and this is be a serviceable, gulpable chardonnay if you like oak-derived flavors but don’t like flabby.