Rutz Cellars Chardonnay Review: California Wine Club

Ok, so of all the wine club wine that I’ve received while building this site, this was by far, my least favorite. It wasn’t a bad bottle, it hadn’t turned. We just didn’t like it and we didn’t like it to the point of pouring it down the drain. So, that’s the short version. Unfortunately, the rest of the wine from California Wine Club wasn’t perfect either, read my full California Wine Club Review to find out more.

Here’s the longer version.

One thing that I think excites people about California Wine Cub is that they are shipping wine from actual wineries that you can visit yourself. From my shipment and some past experience, it seems like they are often shipping two bottles, a red and a white, from the same winery. I think that’s an interesting setup because you get a better idea about the style from that winery. But, it can be an issue if you don’t like it and I think there are some legitimate questions about why they’re doing it, IE, is it just an ease of administration thing where the wine quality is now secondary? Anyway Domaine Rutz, this was a miss for me. Sorry.

Ok, so this is a Chardonnay priced at $30 from the winery, although it is available basically everywhere online for about $20.

As I said before, I wasn’t a fan. My wife especially wasn’t a fan. It was a fairly stereotypical California Chardonnay of yesteryear, plenty of butter and oak. Well, too much of both IMHO. Also, at over 14% that’s awfully high for a white wine being made in the state today and it definitely isn’t consistent with the labeling that seems to suggest a French connection, or at least a French wine appreciation. It reminded me of the classic set of California Chardonnay’s from the 1980’s. They made the state famous. We have largely as an industry moved beyond these. So it was strange to have such a traditional Chardonnay show up to my house from California Wine Club, especially if they’re counting this as a $20 or even, eek, a $30 wine.

Complete miss for me and in my rating scale, you’ll see this listed as 0/2 corkscrews, or stars, or rating points or whatever.

Lastly, so you don’t think this is just me. Here’s the Vivino results, caveat being there’s not a lot of this wine floating around, but the rating scale for a Chardonnay like this, is more like a $5 wine than what it is being counted for here in this shipment.