Something to Wine About: Palmer Pinot Blanc Leave a comment

Need an easy drinking white wine to have on hand? The 2019 Palmer Pinot Blanc is a perfect wine to keep in stock. Clean and fresh with floral and tropical notes, this is a super pairable wine. Of course, it can be enjoyed with pasta in light sauces, chicken, seafood, salads, and quiche, but this lovely wine also pairs well with pizza, burgers, and chips. This is a light to medium bodied white with a crisp and balanced, but not overly acidic, finish.

Winemaker Kareem Massoud was especially pleased with the weather and its effects on the 2019 pinot blanc crop. He said, “September’s gorgeous dry, sunny weather and cool nights made 2019 into a vintage to remember.”

This wine was fermented entirely in stainless steel to preserve the varietal character of the fruit and spent three months on its lees before bottling. 

Lees are leftover yeast particles in wine. Leaving a wine on its lees gives the wine a weightier feel and a creamier texture. Interesting to note is, by law, Champagne must spend 12 months on lees. In the case with Champagne that time on the lees happens in the bottle, and with longer time on lees, flavors like short bread and brioche are often imparted into the wine. With shorter times on lees, it’s more about adding texture and complexity and less about imparting flavors. 

The added texture and body are what makes this very quaffable wine so amenable to combinations of foods outside the realm of expected white wine pairings. This wine retails for just $27.

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