It’s been fun to see William Heritage just try stuff nowadays. In the past couple years, I’ve been consistently impressed with the high quality fruit and excellent textures. They’re still doing traditional still wines, but they’re playing with different methods. I haven’t loved everything, but it’s all been at least good. Some has been great.

Like this beautiful new skin contact chardonnay musqué, just released this year!

Musqué refers to a clone of a grape that’s highly aromatic. Because their regular chardonnay wasn’t aromatic enough before, or had a beautiful color. This wine has had skin contact for 14 days (according to the label), rendering this beautiful deep gold/nearly orange color. It’s unfiltered, so it’s cool to see bits of “wild yeast” swimming around the bottom of the bottle. The aroma is classic chardonnay but with a little mustiness like a really good old bookstore. On the palate I get a little honeyed fruit with a nice long finish.

William Heritage, you keep experimenting, and I'll keep trying them.

When's the last time your favorite winemaker tried something wild? Let me know!