Mendocino Ridge Wine

This $36 wine is at the absolute top of the price list at Taft Street, which makes uniformly excellent wines at extremely reasonable prices - including this wine, which could easily sell for $50+ at a lot of Russian River...

Blend of syrah/zinfandel. Nose of fruit/spice, medium bodied palate with predominantly fruit with a bit of spice from the syrah. Decent everyday wine, nothing extraordinary.

lousy

I found this wine to be thin and supremely out of balance. An overpowering aroma of harsh lemon juice leads to a knockout punch of acidity on the front end that immediately dissappears. On careful tasting one might detect...

Color-black/red; nose-big fruit & spice; mouth-full fruit & coco; finish-long buy it share it age it

Big rich and zinny. Red / black color, red respberry and cedar nose, black & red berry mouth with layers of coco and earth. buy it drink it age it

For a little over $5 its hard to go wrong with this. Its better than average. Certainly kicks Yellow Tail in the pants. Nice clean fruit, not much oak to speak of. The way I like my Chardonnays. This isn't gonna win...

Not much into Chardonnay, but this is decent. I'd dare say that Valley Oaks is Fetzer's best white label, over McNabb and the others.