Winey Tasting Notes: The Lure of the Sale: Hey MAMBO Chardonnay

Once again, a sale price caught my eye. OK, so did the label. I rarely have a wine that yells “Hey!” to me, but given that this one is actually called “Hey MAMBO”, it couldn’t be helped, could it? Now about that sale. Half off. From $14 to $7. So really, I HAD to buy it. What able minded self proclaimed expert shopper would pass this up? Not me. (You had that figured out already though, didn’t you?)
 


I will leave it to you to decide about this back label description.  But buy the wine, okay?

But I have to admit that reading the back of the label gave me a bit of a pause. At first glance, I can only describe the little “story” about the wine as self indulgent drivel. If I picked up a book that started out with this chapter, I’d drop it so fast that my (recently acquired) reading glasses would fall off in the rush of wind. But I think that’s what they were going for here – a kind of a gimmick to describe the wine in a creative way. So once I got past that, I continued on to the check out.

In the interest of equal time, here’s the front label.

So Hey MAMBO Chardonnay it was. Hey MAMBO (2009, 13.5%, California) is a creation of The Other Guys Wine Company, founded by one of the 4th generation of the Don Sebastiani family. It’s actually labelled as a bistro style (translation: meant to be drunk every day) wine and is a blend of 97% Chardonnay, 2.4% Pinot Grigio and .5% Viognier.

The wine is a bright yellow color, which, given the fact that we were once again in the middle of a heat wave, brought cooling thoughts of the bright yellow leaves of autumn trees to my sweaty little mind. The aroma was rich, buttery pear with a hint of cinnamon. It tasted of melon and pear and oak and some tangy star fruit hovered above it all (I think that was the Pinot Grigio talking). The tang mellowed out on the finish.

This was so smooth and oak-y in my mouth, just like a mellow fall day. You know the kind I mean: when there’s a chill in the air but the sky is a startling blue and the trees are all different colors in their full autumn glory. If you live in a one season area, you are really missing out on days like this. I know, I know…autumn can be rainy and windy and brown and smell like wet leaves. But when it behaves, there is nothing like sparkling autumn weather and a smooth, oak-y Chardonnay to go along with it!

For a $14 bottle of wine, this was a good one. Since I got it for $7, this was a great one., totally living up to the idea of an every day/bistro style wine. (I mean really: good wine is good wine, but a good wine on sale gets upped to great…you always gotta add in the value, as well as the “I got this on sale” bragging rights).

Cheers!